Bedtime stories

N has about a billion books.  Okay, maybe not that many, but certainly a lot.  Enough that we don't have to read the same story every night, or even the same story in the same week...  Every night we read two different books to N, and it is very possible we could go an entire month without reading the same one twice.

That said, this is the conversation we have every night after his pjs are on and we're prepping for storytime:
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Me: Whatcha wanna read tonight buddy?

N: The dino book.

Me: What about this book?

N: shakes head furiously  No, the dino book.  Not that dino book.  The other dino book.  How do dinos eat their food.

Me: sigh  Okay.  What other book?  Ferdinad?  This book about the guy with all the spots?

N: looking at me like I'm crazy  No.  I want the animal book with the zoo.

Me: You're sure you don't want Ferdinand?  Holding up "The Story of Ferdinand".

N: Sheer panic  No no no no nononono.  Looks me straight in the eyes so he's sure I'm hearing and understanding him.  The ANIMAL BOOK.

Me: Okay okay, the animal book.  Proceed to read both books without looking at any pages because I've memorized every word at this point.

N: I love this book.
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This conversation happens nightly, but there are probably five books on the rotation:

• "How Do Dinosaurs Eat Their Food?" - good, teach him to try new foods.
• "Wild About Books" - good, everyone should love reading AND zoos
• "The Little Red Hen" - capitolism at it's best.  You don't help, so you don't eat.
• "The Pokey Little Puppy" - I hate this book.  What is the POINT?
• "What Do You Do With A Tail Like This" - educational, but not much of a story.

Replace "Me" with "E" above, and pick any two of the above books and you've got our nightly routine with N.  If anyone needs any toddler books besides those list above, we have a ton.  I'm partial to "I Love You Stinky Face", even if N isn't.

A philosophical exercise

Yoga:

1: (capitalized) a Hindu theistic philosophy teaching the suppression of all activity of body, mind, and will in order that the self may realize its distinction from them and attain liberation

2: a system of exercises for attaining bodily or mental control and well-being

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Before we had kids, I was a runner.  Not a marathoner or anything, but I ran.  Every day, like a religion, I tied up my running shoes and hit the pavement, treadmill, whatever.  After I ran, I would do sit ups and lift weights like my life depended on it.  I was in pretty good shape, but despite all this running, lifting, sitting up, I felt like there was something lacking.

 

These days I still find time to run occasionally, but not nearly as often as before kids.  But I've discovered something else.  A friend of mine teaches yoga and she invited me to a class.   (Check her out here:  http://mikoyoga.com/  She's amazing.) Before her classes my only exposure to yoga had been a semester-long class I took my senior year of college with a bunch of friends.  I was no yogi, by any means.

 

Since her class, I've been stronger, fitter, and more at peace than I have ever been.  Not only is yoga an exercise, it's this type of mental relief that I haven't found anywhere else.  I can't wait until our retreat in a few weeks.  The retreat is going to be awesome!

 

Plus getting these compliments on my arms isn't bad either.

Work is, work.

Person I work with: I'm just not really sure we need to do that test.

Me: But if we don't do that test, how do we know it works?

Person I work with:  I'm pretty sure it's a fluke.  It should work fine.

Me: Wait, I thought you just said this case you're looking at doesn't work at all.

Person I work with:  I'm thinking it's okay.

Me: How, exactly?

Person I work with:  I'm just thinking it's a fluke.

Me: ...

Person I work with:  I see what you're saying, but I think it's a fluke.

Me:  ...

Person I work with:  So we should run some more tests then?

Me:  Um, yeah.  More tests. 

Looking back...

 Just an hour or so after B was born - 12 August 2010...

N and B in late May (because I've become increasingly terrible at uploading pictures and am honestly too lazy/tired to go get the camera and do it right now.)

At this point one year ago I was very pregnant.  I'm going to go out on a limb here, but I'm pretty sure that at 8.5 months along there was no mistaking what I was baking.  I decided that I'd capitolize on my company's pretty awesome maternity leave policy, so even though my official due date wasn't until August 22nd, I decided to take the last two weeks before my due date as maternity leave.  That means that one year ago at this point I was prepping for my last day or work before B was born.

There's no doubting what I did with my free time that I was off - I was nesting.  I did more in the time leading up to B's birth than I do in many months normally.  I cleaned everything.  I rearranged everything.  I washed all clothing in our house.  I gutted a closet and even considered painting a room.  (E put the kibosh on painting, but I totally would have done it, if not for him.)  The day I went into labor, I planted a crape myrtle in our front garden.  All the crazy cleaning and reorganizing and tree planting caused me to go into labor 11 days early.  So 10 days before it was supposed to happen, B was in our lives.

I will never forget the feeling of absolute love and adoration I felt for both of our sons from the moment I saw their little faces.  I know this doesn't happen instantly for all parents.  But for me, the love I felt for B was instantaneous, pure, and whole.

I don't talk about it much, but this past year has been the most beautiful, wonderful, and hardest of our entire lives.  E wouldn't talk about it either, but I'm sure he'd agree with me.

Approximately 24 hours after B was born, they discovered a "problem".  When the first words the nurse says to you when she comes in is, "Now, I think you should sit down, but know that everything will be okay.", you know that everything isn't the way it's supposed to be.  At that point, we learned that B had some issues that were going to require surgery to take care of.  I had no idea what that meant.  I was 24 hours post-partum.  I was all alone.  E had gone to get N to introduce him to his new little brother.  My family was not there.  All alone, I sat in a hospital room one day after giving birth and listened to a nurse tell me that they had called for an ambulance to transport my 1-day-old son to Children's Medical Center of Dallas' NICU.

The next few days were a whirlwind of medical staff, tests, waiting, praying, waiting, praying, crying, waiting, waiting, waiting...  Finally, after 1 surgical procedure and entirely too many days, we got to take B home.  Neither of us had slept much and up until a few days before I had no idea what an ostomy bag was, but I knew that somehow, someway, there was a reason for what was happening and that everything would be okay.  I cannot possibly thank the family and friends who supported us in that time (and all the other times) enough.

The next few weeks were normal, then B got an infection.  We were back at Children's for antibiotics and rest.  He turned out to be fine, but it was scary anyway.  At 8 weeks old he endured yet another surgery.  Finally, at 4 months old, he had his final surgery.  After a painful recovery period in the hospital, we were able to go home.

Now we have two of the most beautiful (ehem, handsome!) little boys I've ever seen.  N is crazy as ever, but right now I'm talking about B.  Everyone expected him to have issues, be behind in development, potentially develop other problems.

He didn't.  In fact, he's exceeded everyone's expectations.  He was rolling over by 4.5 months.  Sitting at 6 months, right on schedule.  Crawling by 7 months.  Took his first steps at 9.5 months.  Now, at 11.5 months, he walks all the time (no more crawling for him!), has a few words, and is very opinionated.  He loves his big brother, our dog, and his mom and dad.  He's happy.  He's healthy.  He's all I could ever have hoped for.

I love him more than I can possibly say.  And I love every one of you who has walked this journey with us.  It has been a long road, and there are many many years ahead of us.  I'm just so thankful for the loving friends and family who have gone above and beyond in so many ways.

Thank you.  From the bottom of my heart, thank you.

I love this guy.

Keeping up with the Joneses

This is my house.  I really love it.  When we came on a house hunting trip from Denver in 2008, we saw 30-odd houses on the first day of house hunting.  I became convinced that we would never find what I wanted.  Everything was too small or laid out weird or too far away from work or...  You get the idea.

Our realtor added this house at the last minute as it had just come onto the market.  We were the first people to see it.  One look at the porch and I was pretty much sold.  E wanted us to go inside first, so I aquiesed and visited the interior before actively committing.  (Does jumping up and down on the sidewalk before walking in saying "I LOVE IT!" count as committing?)  Anyway, there were a few minor things we wanted to change about the place, but overall it was perfect for us and for our planned (and now very real) two children.  We made an offer (along with 3 couples who saw the house after us), ended up winning (yay!), and now live here.

As with any house, ours had issues that we didn't immediately identify in our half-hour walk through.  Perhaps the most prominent and oustanding of these are our neighbors to the right.  When you're looking at our house, as you are in the photo above, our master bathroom is on the ground floor on the right hand side.  See the big window?  There's another one like that on the side of the house.  Those are over our master bath spa tub (used approximately 3 times).  Directly adjacent to those windows but technically on our next-door-negihbor's property is our neighbor's front porch.

Our neighbors are very nice people.  They are very friendly and have never been anything but super duper nice to us.  I honestly really like them and they're very easy to talk to.  But not easy enough apparently, because there are some things I'd really like to ask them to stop doing, but have not found the cojones to bring up in our conversations at the mailbox.

Our neighbors like to make excellent use of their very nice porch.  Who can blame them?  It's really nice.  They sit on it a lot.  And they are smokers, it seems.  And drinkers.  I have no qualms with smokers and drinkers.  I personally really don't like smoke.  It gives me a headache and makes my eyes water, but if you want to do it, knock yourself (or your lungs) out.  That said, please don't toss your cigarette butts into the yard.  They're often landing our our side of the yard and it looks trashy.  Plus I'm rightfully concerned you're going to catch something on fire.  We're in a drought you know.

I don't want to sound like a nagging Nancy, and I'm cool with your drinking.  It's whatever.  But do you mind please keeping your empties on your porch?  Or better yet, toss them in the recycling bin.  Seriously.  I'll even give you one to keep out there on your awesome porch to put them in.  I'm not a huge fan of finding beer cans blown into my garden.  I'm not a particularly good gardener anyway, and somehow I feel like the debris is making it worse.

One final request...  If you're going to have a knock-down drag-out fight with your husband/daughter/son/whomever, can I recommend you do it inside your house?  Seriously, my bathroom window backs up directly to your porch.  If you're yelling at each other on your porch, I'm totally pulling a Mrs. Kravitz on you and standing in my bathtub peeking through the blinds to see what the heck is going on.  You can't blame a girl for that.

I can't figure these people out.  And I lack the cojones to talk to them about it.