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!

time flies (for lack of a better title)

Gosh, has it really been almost 2 weeks?!?

So, books...The Pillars of the Earth - really like it so far; thanks Jess!!!

Summer...coming to a quick end! Our lovely school district decided to presume they were being generous to us by creating a school calendar which allowed for two weeks vacation at Christmas. However, that means, that for the first time (dare I say "ever" in this district at least) we start school before Labor Day!!!!!!!!!!! I now have two weeks of summer left, during which I was asked to complete 5 days of professional development - uh, I don't think so! But, that's a whole 'nother story that'll come in the next week or so. But anyway, summer school - taught it for the first time this year, and that was plenty - I think I shall save that privilege for my FAS ('final average salary' for any non-teachers out there).

Canandaigua. Do I really have to say more?! There were many years during my childhood when my grandparents rented a cottage on The Lake each summer. Fond, fond memories, some of my best. So, any opportunity I have to spend time at Canandaigua, I take it. We have some family friends who have a cottage; their wedding present to us was the cottage for a week!! Oh! Anyways, we get there once or twice a summer usually, but it's usually a rather large gathering and tricky with children. Yesterday we went with Grandma and Grandpa and another family also with children. It was a fabulous day - 85 degrees, sunny and Katie has never spent so much time in the water. We got Maggie in for her first swim in Canandaigua, it was really a fantastic day. Thank you M and M!!! A really lovely time.

Katie...she's finishing her ballet class tomorrow and has decided to forego another session and switch to gymnastics. Hey, can't really blame her - those ballet classes have got to be pretty boring! So, with the new school year comes a full schedule...swim class, gymnastics, story time (with Grandma).

Maggie...growing, growing growing. She's beginning solids - carrots are good, cereal - not so much, peas - have got potential. I've gotta throw in there that it's really unbelievable how different two children from the same parents can be! Really, we thought that Katie was such a good baby (and really she was) but compared to Maggie - Katie seems like a pain in the you-know-what!! I know that it'll all come back to haunt us...someday, say 10-12 years from now. For now, I'll just enjoy what we've got! :-)

Time for dinner.

books - part II and cheats

Good lord I need to keep better track of the books I read! So, based on my last post - I had The Time-Traveler's Wife in hand last night, opened it up and started reading...hhmmm, this is really familiar...keep reading, this is weird, I've never read this book - but this is really really similar to something else I've read...keep reading ("Henry is 28, Clare is 20") HA!! I have read this before!! I flip a few pages, yes, I've read this! Keep flipping, go to the end - D&%# it!! I have read this! So, now I need a new book to read! Any suggestions?

Cheats. So, I don't think in week 4 of south beach that ice cream and chocolate sauce is highly recommended, but let me tell you - it sure tasted good!! Come on now - it's fresh local raspberry season and we went to dinner at my parents and my mother loves ice cream, so I brought some of that to go with the raspberries. And I found what turns out to be pretty fantastic chocolate sauce at Target, so I got that too! So, there's one cheat...another one...lemon jello cake: absolutely one of the top 5 on my list of favorite desserts - likely to be in the top three if I really think about it. Uumm, what else, okay, okay, croutons on my salad...this next one's not exactly a cheat - but next time it will be: pasta - barilla's whole wheat plus....yeah, not my cup of tea (or bowl of pasta - hahaha) Sorry. Next time it's gonna be pure white pasta. And last but not least, as mentioned in an earlier post - beverages. I have indulged in a few glasses of red wine, but mainly I've gone to sugar-free "juice" drinks, ie koolaid.

Short and sweet - but I think I'm done for the evening - good night all.

books

Yay, one member! Thanks Car-

Anyways, funny that this 15 Book Facebook note is going around, cuz quite frankly, I was thinking of writing about books even before this facebook fad. Here's why I wanted to write about books:

I just finished The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco. Finally!!! It took (do I have to be honest here?) I started it 7 years ago!!!!! Mind you, seven years, two kids, a wedding/marriage, new house, completed masters degree and plenty of other books in the meantime. So, #1... How do I know for sure that it took at least 7 years? Well, my bookmark was an empty book of stamps with the label dating back to 2002 (at 37 cents!). #2 - why the big deal about this book? Well, it's hard that's what's the big deal. While there are plenty of books out there that I've read for pleasure and say to myself "okay, finished that one" with no real sense of purpose in having read them, just for the sake of it most times. With this book I feel that I've accomplished something, I am proud to say that I have read this book. The sentences are crazy long and convoluted, you really really have to think while reading it. Quite frequently I found myself reading one sentence and then having to turn back and reread it or even turn back a page and start a section over. Crazy, I know - why bother? Well, first - It was around the time when The Davinci Code was big and I really like that type of story...medieval, religious, semi-historical-fiction (barely I know), cults and secrecy; second, I knew it was a reputable book and challenging: I wanted to read it.

I will say, that teaching summer school this year has proved beneficial for my reading list. We have our students do at least 20-30 minutes of SSR and gee, I do it too! I have finished two books that I had started within the past year: The Glass Castle, Run, and then The Name of the Rose and I'm now working on my fourth: The Wizard of Earthsea. Yes, for whatever reason, I am very capable of having numerous books going at once...I can even pick up a book that I left sitting unfinished, and years later finish it: hence the Rose. I will some day finish Sarum and Trinity; gosh, I think I started both of those in high school! Speaking of which, maybe I should pull out Sarum (I am at just about the time of the pagans) before starting Foucault's Pendulum (another Umberto Eco). Hhmmmm. The Fountainhead is also on my list, but I need to get a different edition - apparently I am getting old because the font in the edition I have is just too plain small!

So, The Wizard of Earthsea, you may say - what the heck is that? Thanks to Pete I know and honestly, I have to say it's the original Harry Potter. Really...a child-prodigy-wizard who is trying to learn all he can about wizardry and find his place in the world and has no family to return to. Yeah, sounds like Harry to me. But this was written in 1968!! And while Harry's written at a, what 4th-5th-6th grade reading level, this is a bit higher and quite a bit darker. This protagonist is arrogant and cocky until he screws up royally. Then he turns all meek and withdrawn and duty-driven. That's about as far as I've gotten. Though it too is a series, so, I'll be looking for the next one soon.

Alright, a crying child in the background...gotta go.