Go ahead and Laugh. I did.

I have a new job and a new workout routine (P90x). Hey, don't knock it till you try it, plus I got hubby doing it with me every morning! A task no one thought was possible! It is amazing to feel so great after a grueling hour of working out in the comfort of your bedroom by 7 am,  but hard none the less.

Oh, and we have lots of new nasty little bugs invading our house. They jump from one of us to the next, leaving at least 1.4 of us wiped out at any given time.  I also have gray sky's, 14* days and blasts of snow. The snow we love. The mountain town that shuts down in the snow we do not love. I have a little boy who is literally climbing up my walls and a little girl who needs to flap her social butterfly wings AT LEAST every other day.  Parties being canceled, preschool being canceled, work not being canceled... After what feels like weeks of being locked inside I am about ready to call it quits.
Wait, its only December? Maybe we shouldn't move to Vermont!

The gray sky sunset tonight from my back porch

Maybe its one of the 10 things I just mentioned or maybe being a parent is hard.  Belay is a sweet little boy, he truly is, but he has a bit too much fire sometimes.  And Adi, my love, is so busy running the world that she has a hard time coming down to my level to complete any sort of less noble tasks.

Today Snow White some how got put on repeat.  Andy was sick in bed. I spent the morning at work and the afternoon trying to make something out of this table of what I hope will turn into Christmas gifts. 

So when I saw this come running down the hall.  All I could do was throw my hands up and cry or maybe laugh, I can't remember which.

My living room looks like this. And it probably will still look that way tonight, and next Tuesday.

Adi "mopped" the floor.  I just hope it wasn't with anything that came out of that little potty. Yeah that little one that Belay is so proudly giving himself a hand for using.

While I would really like to forget today. I won't forget that I finally got one lousy photo of my kids smiling and posing at the camera at the same time.  Forget the 158 photos we took last weekend in pretty dresses and handsome pin stripes. This one is going out in the mail this year. 

Teacher Adi

Since I use this blog as my "baby book" I feel the need to record some important information.  Two days in a row, to multiple different people, Adi has announced that she want's to be a teacher when she grows up.  Maybe because her Daddy is a teacher? Maybe because Boots, in her "Dora gets a job"(or something like that) book, wants to be a teacher. Either way, she has said it twice and I think it is so cute.   It's a big moment when a little guys first announce these things, right? 

Unexpected love

Today we had an unexpected, to me at least, snow. In our family and in Western NC snow, no matter how scant, is a snow day. Andy's school is canceled, preschool is canceled, my jobs are (yes, I have two now. Did I mention I started back to work as a pediatric nurse again?) of course, not cancled. But today we all stayed home.

So Adi called her cousins on her princess phone or maybe it was her calculator phone. Either way, I had to help with the invite to come over and play.  Now, we all know how getting out of the house with 2 kids all bundled up and driving across town in the snow can actually take all day, but Adi didn't get the memo.  Well she waited and waited staring out the window, pushing redial on that phone over and over until finally they pulled in the drive way.

Three little girls screamed and jumped and tossed coats and boots and without so much as a kiss hello they bee lined it to the toys.  After a little while I had to go sneak in and see what was going on.  I wish I had a photo of it, but really a photo would have done no justice.  Let me paint a picture. I don't have all the right words to really show how beautiful this moment was but I'll try.

A few months ago, in the kids room,  we cleared out the floor of the closet, piled it high with blankets, added a light to the wall, stacked book in sideways boxes and called it the "reading nook".  It is a magical place. I crawl in there daily to "clean up books" but maybe I'm just secretly wishing I was three again?

Anyways, these three little girls  were all cuddled up sitting in the nook sharing a bowl of trial mix. I heard giggles and whispers.  These three little babies aren't just babies or cousins, they are actually friends.  There was an entire conversation going on in there. One with meaning and purpose. One that seemed pretty important to these girls. One that was not okay for a little brother to be part of.  Then all I could see were these almost 3 and almost 5 year old girls as preteens giggling and gossiping as far away from there parents as they could get. I saw them as best friends 4,6,8 years down the road. 

Their eyes were filled with nothing but joy and love and a touch of honest concentration.  My heart sang just a bit and a tiny tear might have filled in my eye.  It was a moment of pure unexpected happiness for me.
Later when I asked Adi what they were talking about she said they were whispering " I love you!"

Who knows, maybe they were.

Broken little bones

Well that possible broken foot turned into a real broken foot. After days of watching Ads hobble around I sucked it up and brought her in for an x-ray.  She was a trooper!  She picked a purple cast, is anyone shocked?

After crying out that it felt too bumpy to walk and another 12 hours of me carrying her around she decided to give it a go.  She is now crawling or hoping or dragging that beautiful purple cast around the house like its nothing at all.

And what really rocked her world was the picture of Dora and Boots that daddy drew on it.

Her only concern now is how in the world is she supposed to go to the library with that thing on her leg?