Tree Hugger

I enjoy Mother Nature. Honestly. I do. However, it was with relief and not a small amount of fascination that I watched three grown men come to my front yard and remove a 15+ year-old Bradford Pear. It was amazing that they were able to show up at 9:15, and by 10:00 the tree was down, the wood chipper was full and all of the little leaves and branches had been cleaned up and cleared away and they were gone. I assumed it was going to take at least a couple of hours. The mini, of course, was appropriately horrified by the blasphemous nature of the destruction of a beloved tree (perhaps because it had her baby swing still in it?), but I was able to distract her with Super Why.

I honestly regret taking the tree down, for the simple reason that it was quite beautiful. However, since it was also leaning over toward our driveway, I felt like it was a danger to our family and anyone who might be on our property. On a less altruistic level, the root system was sucking up all of the water from our irrigation system, thereby killing the grass in our front yard. And of course, it completely blocked the view from two-thirds of our house. Now, however, I can see all the way down the street and will hopefully have lush, full grass in the spring, which I can enjoy while watching the mini and her friends safely frolic in the yard. At least until I convince DH that we need to plant another tree!

My Own Little Picasso

Some days are too much for me to handle. Others we do okay. Like today for instance, the mini is actually deigning to allow me to keep my sanity (such as it is). One of her newfound favorite things to do is paint. I have set up a little station for her in the dining room, complete with my old "paint-the-house" shirt for a smock and a beach towel on the table. She's in artistic heaven. Here are some pictures of her gettin' her paint on.

First Snow, A New Camera and No Internet Connection!

DH came home with a new toy for me the other day - a palm-sized digital camera that I can fit in my purse and take anywhere for those little candid moments that I've been lamenting I never seem to get on film. So now I have no excuses! Then again, having loaded the wonderful new software onto my laptop, I lost my internet connection and being less than computer savvy, I had to have DH fix it for me this morning. Anyway, all's well that gets fixed in a timely manner, right? So here goes....




These are all pictures of the itty bitty snow that we had yesterday. I woke up at 7:30 and there was absolutely nothing - not a single speck, so I crawled back into bed. At around 8:00, though, the first flakes started falling and by 8:30 we were lightly covered in white stuff. It was really pretty. The mini enjoyed her first snow. Last year she wasn't interested (and I don't think we actually got any snow last year anyway). When she came to our bedroom to wake us up, she stopped at the window in the upstairs hallway and said, "Mommy, it's snowing! I'm so excited!" She was so overjoyed that she started to clap her hands, and jump up and down amid squeals of delight, declaring "Oh! I LOVE SNOW!" When I took her outside for a few minutes before we left for school she got a chance to actually play in it and feel it on her skin. But my little girl is nothing if not prissy - as soon as she realized that it was really cold and wet, she wanted to go back inside. I think she likes to admire the weather from the safety of our nice dry house. I really don't have a girl-scout in the making, do I? That's okay, though. She still thought it was pretty and was excited by it. Of course, by the time I picked her up from school, the snow had stopped and turned to cold, hard rain. She greeted me at her classroom door by saying, "Mommy, where's the snow? It's raining." Hopefully we'll get more snow before spring arrives!

She Loves Us....Or Maybe Not?

It's a good thing when your 3-year-old looks you right in the eye and says "You need to go away some more, MommyDaddy," right? Let me give you the backstory. About 15 minutes ago, DH and I got back from a movie to find our daughter dressed up like Tinker Bell and doing pirouettes in the front hall. She apparently had been having such a good time with the new babysitter that she didn't want it to end. Thus the aforementioned line about us going away. The kicker to this is that we've never used this babysitter before - the mini met her for the first time at 3:30 this afternoon, shortly before we left. I know her mom and that she's trustworthy, of course, but come on! How was I supposed to know that she would claim my daughter's affections to the extent that she wants me to stay gone? How is this fair? Isn't she supposed to love me more than the babysitter? I guess I have two options at this point: 1)let her adopt the mini as long as I get weekend visitation, or 2)never ever go out again unless I take the mini with me. Now that I think about it, weekends sound like a pretty good idea....

Life In Fast Forward

Time is against us, isn't it? I remember when summer seemed to last forever and childhood took so long that I desperately longed to be a grown up. Now I'm wondering where my 20's went (not to mention my teens) and how all of a sudden I seem to be a married mom with a never-ending list of household chores (which never gets finished) and a baby who isn't a baby anymore - I can't believe she's already 3!!! The last three years have snuck up and smacked me right in the fanny. I'm sure I'm part of some weird government experiment in time jumping and memory tampering and it is really still 1994 - I just don't know it. Oh to be 18 again! Sometimes I forget that I'm not 18 and attempt something frivolous and physically strenuous that I would have laughed at when I was 18, only to wake up the next morning and realize that I'm over 30, overweight and overwhelmed, and apparently I'm such a cliche that I actually think it's funny.

Speaking of being overweight, I think I'm going to try to get more fit. Notice I didn't say I had a weight-loss goal - that never seems to work for me. When I say things like, "I'm going to lose 10 (read 30) pounds" I tend to work out for two weeks like a madwoman, eat nothing but salad and water and then completely deflate and give up, having somehow put on two more pounds. (Sometime in the past 10 years, that extra two pounds turned into 20 pounds and I don't even recognize pictures of myself. Who is that woman wearing clothes hanging in my closet that I'm sure are at least 3 sizes too big for me?) This time, I'm just going to try to go to the gym 3 times a week for 30 minutes each time while the mini is in school or at gymnastics. I'm not even going to get on a scale or worry about the weight. I'm just going to go. I figure that way I'll hopefully develop a healthy habit that will eventually become just another part of my day. Maybe in a couple of months I'll worry about the next step, changing my diet. Wish me luck!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!

We celebrated the mini's 3rd birthday on Saturday at The Little Gym and had a blast. All of the kids seemed to have a really good time, especially on the "whale ride." Even a couple of the moms got into it, turning cartwheels on the big red mat. And of course, there were tons of presents and the mini absolutely loves every single one of them! I think she's pretty much forgotten about Christmas in favor of her birthday presents!

A close-up of the birthday cake - it may have been vegan, but it was actually really tasty!

Blowing out the candles on the cake was a little more of a production than we anticipated - the mini tried, but she just didn't have the lungs for it - I guess we should have practiced for a few days beforehand. DH and I eventually helped her blow out the candles and everyone cheered!

Waiting for cake...yum!

This picture was of the oh-so-fabulous "whale ride" that the kids got to go on. The instructors basically pulled them really fast across a couple of rolling mats. I actually wanted to try it myself!

This blow up track was probably the most popular activity for the kids - they could run and jump around on it until they exhausted themselves - I bet everyone got a lot of quality sleep that night!

Daddy and the mini had to take a little break after wrestling on the blow-up track.



The mini on the uneven bars.

Happy New Year!

Ahhh, the New Year. A time for making resolutions, for letting go of the past and looking forward to the future, for cleansing your soul and reorganizing your life and your priorities....and what better way to do so than with brand new furniture!?! I received one more Christmas present (about a week late, but what the heck) in the form of a new buffet server/credenza for my dining room. We've been looking for something for about 2 years now and finally found it this weekend. We thought we wanted something in the Shaker style, stained a dark color with simple, straight lines and no embellishment - guess what we got? A painted piece more in a french/italian style with curves and flowers. Isn't it weird when you go out looking for one thing and then, wham!, something else jumps out at you and you just know it is exactly what you need? Life is so funny like that sometimes, isn't it?

We took these pictures at the furniture store. I can't wait to see how it looks in our house!

To top it all off, we're 90% sure we're going to be getting a second piece, which is actually in the Shaker style we thought we wanted, but is more of a storage and display unit. Not to mention that we're now also looking at dining room tables and chairs - heck, you can't just stop with one thing when you're on a roll, right? Might as well re-outfit the entire room. Talk about the snowball effect! Furniture shopping can be so much fun when everything is on sale!