"...But What Does it Have to do With Flying an Airplane?”

I will not write the post that apologizes for not posting.  You've all read it on a hundred other blogs.  No I haven't blogged.  And I haven't read yours, either.  And that's OK.

With my mood swings getting more jagged, the last couple months, I've retreated more and more.  I made the horrific mistake of trying to read the Hunger Games series during one of these retreats.  Good books, but not for when your mental state is already tippy.  In an effort to keep myself stable, I've pulled back my friendships, too.  Real, tangible friends; on real, tangible outings; with real, "tangible" sunlight; on real, tangible pool water or playgrounds.  Even those aren't that often, but they give me solid ground, both literal and metaphorical, to stand on.  I suppose I've followed President Uchtdorf's advice about throttling back without really even thinking about it.

Strangely enough, my new footing is echoed in the ideas presented here, too.



As part of finding my center, I changed my social behavior.  To give me the foundation of warmth and friendship I need to build myself back up, I rely on live conversations with live people.  The need to edit, to present myself, to find the perfect whatever in the endless PR campaign of blogging and even Facebook, was just too much.  I dropped everything that took more than 30 seconds of planning.

So no, you're not likely to see an uptick in posting.  I am, however, much healthier for it.  And that's what matters.

Snow Day

There was something about the fresh snow that made me want to work on my photography skills.


It's easy to see ordinary things in a new way when dusted with a fresh layer of snow.


The whole world is ready for a new start.


Even if we've done it before, everything around us is a new discovery.


And then, if we're really ready to enjoy the wonders before us, we ditch the camera, flop down on the ground, and make snow angels in the parking lot...


or grab a laundry hamper lid and go sledding on the hill by the laundry room.








Most of it is already gone, melted by the sun's return. It was a fun morning, worth getting woken up some time before 6am so the superintendent can tell us to sleep in. Only just, though.

Green

I had been hoping to post pictures of field day but Elena spent the better part of last week at home with a series of fevers and general yuckiness. In fact, she managed to miss all (and only, poor girl) the days that there was something cool going on at school. On Tuesday she missed awards and her fever didn't go down until late that night so she had to miss field day on Wednesday, too. She went back to school Thursday but woke up crying with a 102 degree fever and the dry heaves at 4am on Friday and had to miss the bounce houses. Sigh...

Anyway, we do still have interesting stuff to share. We found a caterpillar in the back yard and Elena decided she wanted to watch it turn into a butterfly. I decided this would be OK and would nicely follow up their recent science unit about butterfly life cycles. So this is her caterpillar. She named it Green.


I dug out my old fish tank and Jonathan found it some sticks and leaves to hang out on, and we've had a really fun time watching it eat. It tried privet and elm and tomato but seemed to prefer basil. It's probably going to be an ugly brown moth but we're OK with that. All the excitement has been very tiring, though, and she's taken a ton of naps, this week. She even fell asleep while draped over the exercise ball.

Green is currently curled up in a tomato leaf, wrapped in a silky little cocoon. I need to remember to take more pictures.

Walkin' Around the Christmas Tree

James has spent the last week and a half perfecting his walking skills. He started with a crouched over, lurching duck-walk before moving on to a twitchy, sideways sidle and had now settled into the traditional controlled stumble. Choice of mobility methods has also shifted, each day bringing more displays of his new abilities. I think he might have switched over, today. Anyway, here's a bit of video (it's kind of long) to tide you over until we see many of you for Christmas.

"Mom, I Need a Box..."

"Why do you need a box, sweetheart?"
"I need a box to cut holes in so I can make canons."
"Canons? Like on a pirate ship?"
"Yes!"

So Daddy helped them make a pirate ship out of a box we had in the hall. James is playing the part of the sea monster, in the pictures.



Oh, and this is how the canons work.

Getting so Big

James grows and grows. He crawls everywhere he can get to, investigating everything around him. He's tried to stand by himself, once or twice, and is starting to cruise around the couch and his crib.


Part of getting bigger is eating Big Kid Food. His favorite, of course, is bananas (his first word was "na-NAAAA?!?"), but he also likes avocado, cheese, crackers and Cheerios.

Bonus footage of his Happy Kicky Dance!

Third Little Monkey

We dropped the mattress on James' crib, tonight, just in case he figured out how to pull up on stuff sometime soon. Ten minutes later...

Cousins!

My sister-in-law Kim and her kids Spencer and Jenna visited town last week. We had a great time getting so many cousins together. I don't have pictures for everything, but here are some.

Thursday way we went to the Children's Museum and then out to lunch at The Spaghetti Warehouse.






Friday took us to a whole wonderland of bouncy houses at Texas Jumping Beans. Joseph was in love with the slides, though the rocking horse motorcycle in the little kids' area was pretty cool, too.




At this point I took the camera out of my purse to upload to the computer and forgot to put it back.

Saturday was Sherry's baby shower and basic family chilling with a big lunch and fun in the pool. Monday held a trip to the capital and the Bullock Museum before heading to an Express game. It was a lot of fun! Many thanks to Mom for sponsoring so much of the fun; Jeri for offering the hospitality of her house and providing game tickets; and Kim, Spencer & Jenna for enduring long flights to come see us all. We hope you got home safe.

Fireworks!

We're so glad that the symphony's fireworks show is back at Auditorium Shores. It's just a way better location on all fronts than Zilker could ever hope to be. (To be fair, Zilker had the Springs and picnicing areas across the street, but that's it.) We rode the bus up, since the 16 goes from our house to the auditorium. As always, the kids thought that the bus was a great adventure.


Once up there, we met up with Jonathan's sister and her family, plus we ran into a friend we hadn't seen in a while and invited him to join us as well.



We ate snacks and grooved to the radio station that was sponsoring the concert. At concert time, we could see the symphony pretty well and the sound system was set up so everyone (even the people on the other side of the river) could hear. Joseph rocked out to Leroy Anderson, dancing around the blankets, and loved being bounced on my knees for Sousa and the 1812 Overture. Elena somehow fell asleep during that last one (I told her, this afternoon, she needed a nap so she could stay up late) and missed ~95% of the fireworks.


Joseph, silly boy, had no problem with all the noise, but insisted on peeking through his fingers to watch the fireworks. The show was great (way better than New Year's) and as a bonus you could see the reflections ripple down the side of one of the new condo towers. It was a super cool effect.





For some reason (parking congestion?) our bus was taking a detoured route and was not running after hours to pick up the fireworks crowd (despite being advertised as such on the website) so we had to dash across the street to catch the very last bus home. It was packed but everyone was in a good mood. Joseph pointed out all the things he recognized (Moon! Star! Light!) and Elena slept, folded in half on my lap. I think everyone had a good time. I certainly enjoyed it. I'm already looking forward to next year.

At Last!

Elena asked for a "puckle" for Christmas a year ago and has, since then, insisted on scooting along with feet firmly on the ground... until today!



We went outside while Joseph napped, hoping to enjoy the sunshine and let Elena burn off some energy. We brought the tricycle out with us and she hopped right on and started peddling down the sidewalk. She got really good by the time we decided to go back in. Here's another run:




P.S. The chipmunk cheeks are because she has grapes stuffed in there.

Kites

Richard and Chrissie were in town for Christmas, so we met them at the park for a picnic, duck feeding and kite flying. Jonathan's dragon kite flew like a dream, soaring into the air with the slightest toss. It was so easy to handle that we let Elena do it all by herself. Joseph liked to run free through the grass, finding other people's soccer balls and kicking them. He's got some serious dribbling skills for a 1 1/2 year old.






Bonus video of the dragon kite. It flaps!

A Day of Birthday Proportions

It's Elena's birthday, and what else is there for a "three-year-olds" to do but to visit all her favorite places. This means, first of all, a visit to Whole Foods (we love the samples!) Not just a Whole Foods, though, but the Whole Foods. (Well, if you're getting historical, the Whole Foods is just down the street and is now a used record shop, but this one is still the flagship store.) We tasted a hot guacamole, some smoked salmon, vanilla soy milk, and spicy mixed nut bark (who knew chocolate could burn?), and saw piles of pumpkins (for carving... for pies...), breads and cheeses of all sorts, and birds walking on the sidewalks. Joseph tried to catch them.




After that, we headed to the brand new second location of Hey Cupcake!, conveniently located a few blocks from our local grocery store. We'd been saving our free cupcake coupon for just this occasion, and Elena picked a brown cupcake with white (actually colored pink) on top, and whipped cream inside. We told the cupcake guys it was her birthday and they put a candle on it for her to blow out.


Hey Cupcake! also happens to be two spaces away from a firehouse (with the local eclectic yarn store wedged in between), and their truck was parked outside. I asked Elena if she wanted to look at the truck, and we carefully stood out of the way, just in case the bell rang. Someone saw us, though, and Liz the Firelady came out to say hi and ask if we wanted to see the truck up close. As usual (well, as with the only two other firetrucks we've played on) Elena would only agree to sit in it if Mommy was right there with her. We tapped a hat, though, and looked at the boots, and took a picture. Everyone got badge stickers, we saw a really old firetruck in the garage (but didn't get to investigate), and the firelady was super nice.


Once we got home, it was nap time for Joseph, and Elena got to do a special craft. Since we'd seen so many pumpkins at the "food store" we decided to make paper pumpkins at home. I cut them out, and Elena colored faces and glued on stems and leaves. The mouths are more scribbley than usual because "pumpkin mouths go up and down."


I don't have the proofs yet, but we also went in to Daddy's picture store and got new pictures of Elena for the mantle/shelf and the front hall. For dinner, we had "macky-roni cheese in the oven" and candles on a Happy Birthday brownie.



She opened presents all by herself, including the card. She loves the book, Mom, and will discover the wonders of the dress soon, I'm sure.


All this birthday stuff has been really fun. She's been looking forward to her birthday ever since Joseph's, and the payoff has been her excitement these last few days. Maybe we can get her interested in mine...

Elena's Movie

When Jonathan decided to test out the iMovie stuff on his Mac, last spring, he made this video. It goes along with a much earlier post about singing in the mornings.

Truckin' Baby

I love the video upload! Here's Joseph walking around outside.

Two Little Monkeys...

(It's not your speakers... our camera doesn't have sound.)