Dear Spring,
We are so glad you are here. Please stay. Don’t leave us until Summer is here to take over. Please please please!!
Love,
Maria & Charlie
Saturday
You can’t see Maria’s tears here, but she just fell off her bike, so Charlie is taking her back to the driveway to play with chalk.
Sunday
I can’t even believe how fast the last 2 years have gone! Charlie has gone from this baby boy…
to this little boy!
More pictures here. Photography in the midst of entertaining is not my strength…
Charlie at 2 loves cars and trains (choo choos). He loves books, especially books about dump trucks. He loves balls and being outside! Blocks are great fun as he figures out how they fit together. It’s fun to watch him as he solves a “problem”.
He loves his sister and his bum-pas and bum-mas (grandparents). He also loves Elmo and Curious George.
He is also independent and pretty fearless. He does not mind being dropped off at the church nursery or the YMCA kidstuff to play for an hour or so. He jumps right into activities that look fun.
He does not like to sit in the shopping cart but prefers to walk when we’re out. His vocabulary is exploding and it is fun to see how he associates different things from memory.
Although he has his “two year old” moments and part of me fears that his two’s will be more terrible than his big sister’s, we still think he’s pretty great! And looking forward to the times ahead and trying new things as our family of 4 gets more and more “mobile” every day!
So maybe it seems like time is going by like crazy, because weather wise it really feels like Spring! I mean today it seems cold (16 degrees F). so yes, that is cold, but not relatively for MN for February!
So the last time I wrote we had finally gotten some snow. Well that snow has gone. A little more came, but now that snow is gone too.
Maria has also recovered from her tonsilectomy. She is doing well. Even had a cold that did not turn into an ear infection! And she is sleeping and just generally seems to be feeling well overall. She is sleeping well. Wondering if we have a growth spurt on our hands. As they say this is likely with her body finally feeling on par! She is all about writing notes, primarily Love notes “I Love you Mommy”, “I love you Grandpa”. And also cutting and coloring and taping! 
Charlie has also grown. The kid is walking around in short pants. Oh and he’s talking a lot more in just the last month. He amazes us. He loves his dumptruck and will be 2 next week! We are having a dump truck themed party. If you ask him how old he will be on his birthday, he whispers “ump-tuck”. ha!
Will try and add some pictures later tonight (no promises… I’m just saying..)
We didn’t get much, but we finally got a little snow and Charlie finally got to wear his snow pants! He loved it! All boy! He helped shovel the whole time Chad was shoveling! And cried when they were done, so then Chad pulled him around in the sled for a while, and he even got in a quick swing on the playset.
Note: the wall behind him that I “took out” last week with our truck.
So not a resolution, but my intention for 2012 is to quiet some of the noise in my life. My head is always going… always. unless I’m sleeping then I’m out – I don’t dream (or remember my dreams) at all. I’m a tired mom!
So to obtain the goal of a quieter mind and life:
So it is January 18th, we’re currently just over halfway through the month, and how am I doing?
The first week was really good. The second week, work got busy, life got busy. And that Friday was the 13th. And it was NOT. A. GOOD. DAY!
I got to sleep in a little, because the kids were going to the back-up daycare center, so I was planning on driving in to work with them in the morning. So I had just bought my daily devotion the day before, so I read it before I got out of bed. It was about letting God guide us through our days. So after I read, I prayed that God would help me to listen to him. So I got up, got ready, got both kids fed, dressed and loaded in our Traverse (because it had snowed a little and I just feel safer in the bigger vehicle with both kids in bad weather).
Soooo…. I back out of the garage and Maria asked me a question about music. I said no, we were listening to my radio station and then … crunch. I backed into a our brick privacy fence (that is attached to our house). crap. The whole wall fell over and the truck now has a nice big scratched up dent (2 separate panels). argh! that is 2 separate insurance claim (homeowners and vehicle!)
Go back inside, tell Chad (he’s mad!), find the insurance papers, put the kids in my car, because I still have to go to work, because my daycare is downtown today and I’m missing work the next week.
So driving to work, carpool lane, because I have both kids with me. Probably about 3 times, I checked my speed. I don’t normally have to do this, because my Corolla does not go that fast without being kind of loud. But I did, and decide that I’m OK, a little over the limit, but that’s pretty normal for the carpool lane (and me).
Driving into downtown (Charlie is shouting and pointing at the skyline – “dow-tow” where did he get this??!) And I leave the interstate to a different highway which takes me into downtown. Go to change lanes, as there is an intersection right ahead and I don’t need to be in the left lane. Realize I can’t change lanes, and BAM – rear-end another car. The kids are OK. I’m able to follow the driver to get off the road and onto the median. We exchange information, the state patrol and tow truck drivers come. We hang out in the cold backseat of the state patrol until Chad (who was now even more frustrated) gets there to take us home.
Anyway, I didn’t total the car (came close though. it’s already fixed.). Paid the deductible. The Traverse and wall, we’re planning to fix out of pocket, because it’s not much more than the deductible. It was a bad day! Really, it was a bad hour!
It was a long day, just thinking about what happened. Plus I took myself and the kids to Urgent Care after Maria started complaining of a sore back. (We all checked out fine, except for her pink ear, which they treated with antibiotics. not related to the accident)
But the more I thought about it, my prayers were answered. Again, not in the way I’d expect… but I’m pretty sure God was telling me to slow down. And that He was the voice in my head telling me to check my speed.
This is a long post, I realize. And in the end, the accidents boil down to money we don’t want to spend, but no one was hurt. And it gave me another reason to be more conscientious and deliberate about quieting my life.
Maria is home and recovering. She is loving smoothies, ice cream shakes, popsicles and TV.
She impressed everyone at the hospital with how well she behaved for the anesthesiologist and then woke up and ate popsicles RIGHT away. She was awesome. I don’t think she has shed a single tear today!
The doctor warned that day 3 or 4 might be worse as scabs heal, they may become more irritated. But everything went well and recovery is going about as well as can be expected right now! I’m hoping I’m able to do a little work at home tomorrow while she recuperates.
I am ready for January to be over. And I realize I haven’t posted a lot. I have plans in my head on what to write about (hint: it’s related to my new year intentions), but then part of achieving those intentions is why I’m not sitting at my computer blogging.
Plus some catching up on our life this January, but again I can tie it back to the other post. AND yet, tonight I’m not writing about that, because tomorrow bright and early, Maria gets her tonsils and adenoids taken out. So just a little prayer for my sweet little girl on getting through tomorrow and the next few days, possibly the next couple weeks would be much appreciated. Hoping to finally put an end to this vicious cycle of ear infections and antibiotics!
In the past 2-3 weeks, Charlie’s vocabulary has exploded! Maria at this age was already an active talker. Charlie is just a slow talker.. he gets everything else! He understands a lot, just has never verbalized it, so he is already putting words together to get sentences. And he is also ennunciating the words he knew better. About a week ago, he added in the letter “K” sounds to many one syllable words and it is so cute when he says them…
Here’s a list of words I can remember:
booK, nuK, rocK, pray, on, light on, elmo, dora, um-tucK (dump truck), snaCK, ya-ya (Maria), baTH, duCK,
Other Charlie observations:
Maria told me last night that she is nervous to have a baby, because she doesn’t know what will happen when she goes to the hospital to have it.
I told her she has a long time to worry about that and that the doctors could give her medicine so it wouldn’t hurt so much.
As we are recovering.. yes again. Maria from Strep & Charlie just from a nasty cold/cough, we spent the day and evening at home.
But it was in the mid-40s, so we did get outside for a little bit. Most of the toys are put away for winter, including the bikes, so we just got out the “little” bikes. Even though both kids were a bit too big, they still enjoyed the time outside. Rumor is that snow is on the way, so maybe we’ll be able to get out the sleds tomorrow!
