The Family Portrait

My family was never big on professional photos; in fact, I can only recall two such instances in my life: senior pictures for high school and my wedding.

So, I picked Katie up from daycare the other day and she has this picture, (I think this is a keeper for posterity!) and she says it's her family.

Here's our conversation:

Me: Katie, who's in the picture?

Katie: That's Maggie (the little blue person in the upper left); there's the sun (should be obvious); that's Daddy (the red person) and that's Grandpa (the green one).

Me: Is that even Grandpa's mustache? (The green splotch in the middle to match the green hair)

K: Yes

Me: No Mommy? Where's she?

K: Oh...nope - maybe next time.

:-)

The Girls

I do hope you can tell that Maggie has the biggest smile on her face here.

It is so awesome - the pleasure that Katie and Maggie get from each other. (It almost makes me want to add another to the mix. I said almost.)

Anyways, I suppose this one will be about the girls.

Really, I couldn't be more proud of the relationship these two have. I truly think that there is no one who can get Maggie laughing and squealing quite like Katie. They have this game they play (it drives Matt crazy in the car): it's, I guess to get technical - part of Maggie's language acquisition skills; but they squeal and squawk and mimic each other, with escalating volume, of course. Maggie says "da" Katie says "da" and "dada" and then "dada" and it gets to shrilling volumes. I love it - it gets too loud for Matt though, but as long as he does somewhere appreciate it, then we're ok.

It seems as though Maggie goes through more separation anxiety when Katie leaves than when I do....what does that say!? Yesterday afternoon, Matt and Katie went out and Maggie was not very pleasant the whole time they were gone...makes me feel special (not!). But when Katie got home - everything was great.

I can't expect that it will always be like this between them, but I sure can hope for it! And enjoy every second that it is like this.

The return of the d-word

It's back! That pesky d-word. sshhh....whisper....diet. Ugh. There, I said it. Yup, South Beach again. I swear though, some of it is a crock of you-know-what! "Your cravings should subside within a couple of days" B-S!!! I don't think so. Hence the reference elsewhere: do you dream of bread? Yes, I do! and pasta, cereal, rice, I wasn't going to say potatoes, but french fries are potatoes, so those too. It's been 9 days and man-oh-man, I could go for some starch. I've been good though, over at friends' the other night, no pizza, no chips, no beer or wine, no bread with chili.

It might help that Matt is doing it too. But I gotta say: Men Suck!!! 11 pounds for him!!!! only half that for me. Oh well. I do know that's typically the way the cookie crumbles. Oops, there I go! (At least we don't have any cookies in the house).

In terms of the food, it's not hard to follow. It does take alot of preparation...having clean fresh veggies (preferrably ones to eat raw for snacks). Making salads and eating them in a timely fashion so nothing rots. Meats...just finding ways to cook, prepare and sauce that's within the guidelines. And knowing you'll eat one meat and 2 veggies instead of meat, veggies and rice/potatoes/bread. Nuts are good and beans. If you're thinking of starting...(MWM) buy the newest edition - they've added alot of foods for Phase 1.

So here's some of my thinking. I never lost the weight after baby #1. I was conscientious, but it never went away and after a certain point, I figured: Heck, I'm gonna have another baby anyways, so forgetaboutit. But now, I know I am done having babies. So, I've got to do this. For me.

So, now that I am done making myself accountable to the world, off to eat dinner - marinated swordfish and salad. MMmmm

Stuff - the good, the bad, and well, just stupid stuff too

Okay, if you keep reading you'll see the actual post and the fact that I was going to try to do pics, so I got the pics but can't yet figure out how to move them! (This entry turned out longer than anticipated - blame it on the pictures)

#1 - if you missed out on the holiday card - here's a variation on the picture
#2 - Katie making funny faces while decorating cookies for her party - read on...
#3 - the dichotomy that is Katie: a bejeweled princess driving her remote control hummer!!! a fantastic picture

Okay, so let's start of this New Year with a New Post!

Good stuff - BABIES...there will be at least two new babies in the family this year. My sister-in-law is due on March 15, yes - that is Maggie's birthday!!!! That could be tricky though, so a day early or late might be good. And another Cousin is having a baby (Yay, Fort Washington!!!!)

More good stuff...the family is good. Really, we're all doing very well. So far this season, escaping major illness (okay, an ear infection, but that's nuthin'). Maggie is growing and growing. Clapping; pulling up to stand; taking a couple cruising steps...it's funny, interesting, unfortunate, and I suppose normal, to see the differences between parenting an only child (Katie until 9 months ago) compared to parenting a second child (Maggie). I feel kinda bad for Maggie. It seems like I'm paying so much less attention to her than I did to Katie at this age. I know Katie at that age was so much more diverse in her eating, for one thing. Finger food, meat, yogurt, just in general. Maggie is still eating almost all jarred stage 3 food. Ugh.

Katie. I'm not sure I'm gonna be able to keep up with her. She is learning so much so quickly. She got a big floor puzzle for Christmas, it was of the solar system. I asked her if she knew what it was a picture of and she proclaimed "Outer Space!" like I was an idiot! :-) Writing, spelling, numbers, strangely - really really basic math: you have 5 dolls, if I take one away, how many do you have? That's not wierd to do with a 4 year old is it!? OMG - yeah, she's 4!!!!!! Good segue here...

4 year old birthday party! We did it. Her b-day was a Friday and her friend Lydia's was the next day so her mom and I decided to do a joint party..if you asked Katie which daycare kids she wanted to invite, she'd name a certain 5 and if you asked Lydia, she named a whole other 5, so we invited the whole daycare room! 14 children! There was a "no" or two and an extra sibling or two so, we ended up with 14, maybe 15 children between 3 and 5 years old all at my house!!!!

I had this idea to decorate Christmas cookies as the party's primary activity. Yeah, CRAZY - you don't need to tell me that. After I'm not sure how many batches of dough, rolling, cutting out and baking - we ended up with enough cookies for each child to decorate 4 cookies and an extra 2 dozen for our house. (which we really could have done without.) AND - it was not a disaster! Lots of frosting, lots of sprinkles and cinnamon thingy-s and we had a party. (I'll see if I can figure out how to put pictures in this thing.)

So, "The good, the bad and just stupid stuff"....so what's next...the bad? Not a whole lot - we are healthy, we have our jobs (like them or not; primarily "not"). So, on to "stupid stuff"

"Stupid" here refers to trivial and insignificant.

Books: I have not read a book since my rampage through half a dozen this summer. I have a big pile of books to read and an even bigger list (I know - you English geeks there's an improper comparison there: you can't compare the size of a pile to the length of a list, oh well! {Yeah, you probably know the proper term for that, too!!!})

Coffee makers: For some reason I am on a mission to find a new one. The one I have been using for however many years, was a wedding present. Matt doesn't drink coffee, so I'm not sure if that helps or make the decision-making more difficult. Hhmm. Anyways, he kindly bought me one as a gift from the girls for Christmas (thank you!), but I didn't care for it and I really didn't care for the price! So, I bought one that I thought I liked, at least there were certain aspects that I liked, but there were things I just couldn't get past/passed(?). Today, I bought another one and am doing a test run before tomorrow AM...we'll see...I guess that's it. I'll see if I can find my way back here sooner than in another 5 months.

So long for now!