Just call me Suzy.

There are just some days when it all comes together. Morning starts with 2-yr old coming in to snuggle with Mama and Daddy. The most heartmelting moment was when I came back from the bathroom to see her hugging Nate, and she looked up at me and said, "Look, Mama! Daddy's my friend!"

Downstairs. Make amaaaaaaaazing oatmeal for breakfast.

Frozen fruit means I can have berries like normal people!!!

Pack lunch for Nate, then begin making banana chocolate chip muffins.

My girlie loves to "hulp".

Make homemade dough for tonight's pizza. So excited about that.

Using my Kitchenaid mixer makes me feel grownup. Also, my little kidlet was eating flour by the spoonful while my back was turned? Flour? Really, kid? You're such a little weirdo!

Sit on floor, drinking coffee and playing with babies while they eat muffins.

This napkin may have been lifted from Nancy Chang's during my rehearsal dinner. I'm just saying that that is possible.

Let's pretend she didn't just find that muffin halfway underneath the dishwasher...

And so on.

I don't have many days that make me feel like I have a real handle on this "being the little wife" homemakery thing. I'm not a natural at the cooking and the cleaning and the grocery shopping (oh, the grocery shopping). But it is my job right now, and I think I could probably put in more effort than I typically do. So here's my start at doing that. I'm not saying I'll suddenly start cooking meals from scratch every night, or that the house will always be spotless, but I'm going to put in a concerted effort.

And hey, I've made my bed every day this week, so I think I'm already on my way.

Read more...

Monday- A Play in Three Parts

Act 1: In which I wake up in good mood, prepare a healthy breakfast for my children, pack a healthy lunch for my husband, clean the entire kitchen, carry all laundry to the basement, and get a healthy dinner in the slowcooker, all before I even have my coffee.

Act 2: Wherein we discover that there is only enough laundry soap for one load (there are 5 loads to be done), the baby smears pb&j in her hair and requires a bath prior to naptime, and we find out that the "ranch dressing" I put into the aforementioned sack lunch was actually leftover clam chowder.

Act 3: Our hero (that would be me) seriously considers having donuts and wine for lunch, but decides against it. Because we have no more wine.

Happy Monday, all.

Read more...

Come on down!

Maybe shorter entries=more entries? I'm trying that approach for now. Quantity over quality.

You know that game where you say a bunch of words and phrases and you have to guess what they have in common? Well here you are-

1. "That's enough."
2. "Get down."
3. "Get your hands out of there."
4. "Stop licking that."


...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...


If you guessed "Things I said to my toddler in a public restroom yesterday" you win the big prize!

Show the people what they won! You win the privilege of not having to deal with allllllllllla that.
Bonus points if you can tell me what I was referring to in each of those admonitions.

That's okay. I kinda like her.*

And this one, too.**

*Just on the off chance that this picture isn't immediately understandable- that is my child. Wearing a 6-9 month size bathrobe and women's size 7 Jack-o-lantern socks, standing on one leg in the kitchen, eating an apple. Or as I like to call it- Friday morning. I mean, isn't that obvious?

** Baby. Eating a pen and playing with cables underneath Daddy's desk in the office. Obvi.

Read more...

That Crazy Chicken.

The first of what I am sure will be many many stories:

The Scene: Our car. Stuck at a traffic light waiting for a train to pass.
The Characters: A 2-yr-old and her mama.

Finn: Hey! Across the street!
Mama: What's across the street?
Finn: A chicken!
Mama: Why is he across the street?
Finn: Goin' fast!
Mama: He's going fast? Why?
Finn: Chicken f'eezy colden.
Mama: He's freezing cold? Well is he wearing a jacket?
Finn: Ummm, yeah.
Mama: He's wearing a jacket and he's still cold? Well, is it zipped up?
Finn: Umm. No.
Mama: Well he better zip up that jacket. What kind of coat is it?
Finn: Geen!
Mama: A green coat? Wow. Where is he going?
Finn: Boots!
Mama: He's wearing boots? What kind?
Finn: Geen!
Mama: Green boots and a green coat? Where is he going?
Finn: An'na hat! Geen hat!
Mama: Green boots and a green coat and a green hat? Wow. What is the chicken's favorite color?
Finn: Pink.
Mama: Well, where is the chicken going?
Finn: His car.
Mama: His car, huh? Then where?
Finn: Driving so so so fast.
Mama: He's driving so fast? To where?
Finn: Across the street.

This kid is the best.

Read more...

As promised.

On Friday I got as far as titling this entry. Today I've started on the actual writing, so we are heading in the right direction.

I've got two girlies sleeping simultaneously today (huzzah!), which does not happen very often. In fact, they have been doing this back-and-forth napping thing that has kept us pretty much housebound for the past few weeks. I'm hoping all that ends soon. Today was actually a great day, sleep-timing wise. It doesn't hurt that Violet slept for SIX STRAIGHT HOURS for the past two nights in a row! Last night she only woke up TWICE between 8:30 and 8:30! Which is ohmyGAH so amazing!

I've started running again. Back at the end of December I found out that my sister has been liek stepping up the fitness thing HARDCORE and it made me feel all lazy schlumpy so I registered for a 10k and downloaded a training program to my iPhone. Bam, done, now I'm a dedicated runner too, HAH. And then I promptly did no running whatsoever for about a month. Then one nice warm (almost up to freezing!) day I allowed Nate to shove me out the door and it was so freaking amazing. Cold air in my lungs, warm sun on my face, snow crunching under my feet. I'm back, baby. Running(ish). I'm actually doing the Couch2 10k program, which eases you into running over a period of a few months by alternating running intervals with walking. So for now I'm still at half running/half walking. BUT it feels awesome. Today I was really looking forward to my run but when I woke up at 7:30 the dude on the radio said that with the windchill factor it was -30°c and that's just way too cold, even for me.

Sooo, what else is new. Babycakes is working on another tooth! This makes five, and she seems to be taking this one like a champ, only one evening of fussiness and today she is happy as can be, so hopefully we're over the worst of that one. She's still crawling around like crazy, pulls herself up to stand ALL OVER THE PLACE. And she's even getting good at sitting herself back down, which is great. OH and she can clap! With a big old grin on her face! So stinkin' cute.

Fiona is starting to really get into pretending. Right now one of her favorites is to be the doctor. She gets a notepad and a pen, writes notes on a chart, takes dolly's "temp-chur"; the other day dolly was sick and had to have lunch to get better. Doctor's orders. She also is getting very into reading stories to me (and to "sisser"), which is awesomely cute. She knows some of the pages by heart, others she makes up a story about the picture on the page. Good times, right there.

Life is going on pretty much the same as before, except we are like a jillion miles away from everyone. We do a lot of "bideochapping", as Fiona calls it. Keeping in touch via webcam. It works, but we do miss everybody from back home. Facebook helps. I don't think I would have been able to make this move in a pre-facebook world. Oh, internet. I loves ya.

My window of opportunity (haha, Colleen) is closing quickly here, and I'd love to go grab another cup of coffee before the ruffians wake up, so I'll end with a little something I was musing over the other day. I can't seem to get it into the entry seamlessly, but I wanted to share my thoughts concerning the evolution (or degeneration?) of motherhood.

When my firstborn was a baby and she pooped in the tub, we FREAKED OUT. Picked her up, wiped her down with a wet wipe, emptied and scrubbed the tub, and then re-bathed her.

The other night when my second born pooped in the tub, I scooped the turds out with my hand, chucked them into the toilet, and then turned around and said "Okay guys, let's get hairwashing started."

Such is my life. Scoop out the turds and move on.

Read more...

Still Alive. More Later.

We are still alive. We live in Canada now.

I have big plans to actually write a blog entry, hopefully tomorrow?

But I'll have to see what my bosses say.

Read more...

Too busy for this.

So I actually don't have time to write up a blog post right now, due to the whole moving to Canada thing... but I'm sitting here watching Violet scoot all over the room, in that "not quite crawling but more than just rolling over" way she has, and realizing that I HAVE to take the time to do at least short posts to track that sort of thing. I just went back and read through a few old posts from when Fiona was that age, and guess what? If I had no written down record of it, I WOULD HAVE NO CLUE when she did things like crawl, or cut teeth (which Violet is also doing right now, actually), or walk, or talk... I really have to be better at keeping track.

So.

Violet is just shy of 6 months old. Fiona just turned two. They had doctor visits last week, they are both TEENSY TINY little girls, Violet is actually smaller than Fiona was at that age, if you can believe that.

Fiona is getting so big, picking out her own outfits (currently she's wearing "cowboots" and jammies with my fashion scarf around her neck, and of course don't forget the "pitty" eye makeup she's got on) and drawing pictures and asking for chicken "nuckets" every day for lunch and dancing and playing (she just yesterday started doing somersaults and the "fips" (splits)) and grabbing her baby sister in a big hug and saying CHEEEEEESE every time she sees a camera, and in general "showing her personality", (which as all the parents know, is code for TANTRUMS GALORE) and she's just so terribly, wonderfully, completely TWO.

Violet is somehow nearly six months old, which is just amazing to me. She is mobile, this one. Creeping all over the room, finding the one little scrap of paper and shoving it in her mouth. Speaking of her mouth, she's got one little tooth poking through her gums (you can't see it, but trust my boob- IT'S THERE. And it's SHARP.), and unfortunately we can't use those teething tablets we used with her big sister because they've been freaking recalled like 97 thousand other things recently. But she's been really happy anyways, she is such a happy baby the majority oof the time. She nearly slept through the night one. time. A nice 7-hour stretch. But that only happened once and now we are back to that waking up about every hour and a half to two hours. Which is fairly exhausting, but at least all she wants is a quick snack and then she's back out. During the day she is smiley, and likes exploring, and talks with her big sis, and has even been behaving better in the car.

The two of them together are just too much. Fiona still holds on to baby sister's carseat when we drive anywhere. Violet cheers up when Fiona sings to her. They even share a room now, which was kind of middle of the night, spur of the moment thing that really took. I was worried that Violet would wake Fiona up and vice versa, but it's been really good for both of them. At 8:00 every night we all go upstairs and change into jammies and brush teeth and read stories and say prayers, and then Violet nurses and both girls get tucked in; we turn on the lullabies and the nightlight and then they both happily fall asleep. When Violet wakes up to eat again a few hours later, Fiona wakes up only enough to feel reassured that we are here and that she can safely stay sleeping in her bed.

Usually by the end of the night I get tired of sitting up to nurse and Violet gets pulled into bed with me, which means that by about 7am there is another little somebody standing next to my bed saying "Hi!". Nate and I are suckers, which means that we normally end up pulling her into bed with us as well. The other day we suggested that she go back to her own bed, but she just cuddled down into the covers and said "No! Suggle!" and really. Are you going to refuse that?

It's going so fast. I can't NOT take time to write things down.

Picking out pumpkins on Fiona's 2nd birthday

Read more...