Laughing with Sarah

Eleanor Ann - 1 Year Old - December 27, 2017 Life with two kids is rich and full and wonderful and tiring...and some of the little luxuries, like blogging regularly and taking monthly pictures, have fallen by the wayside. The Type A part of me minds a little bit, because now Ellie won't have twelve matching monthly pictures in her baby book, and sometimes I feel guilty, because I managed to do all this for Sam...except that it was only Sam, and even then, it was a hard enough struggle to try to do all the things I wanted to as far as marking and celebrating his milestones. Ellie, we have been enjoying you (and trying to catch up to you!) so much that we haven't stopped to mark all of your milestones. We take lots of pictures and videos of you, but we are hardly organized, especially with some computer issues that have meant re-importing all of our photos, and so these days, we have doubles and triples of photos, stored in many and various places, and nothing is lost, but...

The change of seasons from summer into fall and winter has always been a time that stirs up nostalgia in me. This is the season of preparing for holiday celebrations, and I feel nostalgic for a whole series of small, one-off memories of otherwise long-forgotten or even insignificant moments from childhood Thanksgiving and Christmas preparations. This is the season of college Christmasfest rehearsals, and I feel nostalgic for choir memories, for college moments, and for the days when there was the perfect mix of of alone time time, quiet space, and coming-of-age introspection. In recent years, this is the season of saying the long goodbye to my father, which evokes a different sense of nostalgia, laden with a lot of "what ifs" and "if we had only knowns." And so this is also a season where I feel nostalgic for all memories of my dad and all the things that I associate with him - food (especially holiday meals and treats), music (especially holiday music), and f...

Seven months...and pretty much one more month (August 26, 2017) Eight months...and twenty-two days (September 22, 2017) Nine months...and then some... Well, then. I’m a little behind over here. So we are going to cram three months of updates into one! Ellie, you are nine months old. In so many ways, it feels like you are still brand new. Maybe it’s a second-kid thing, but I have found myself far less anxious about rushing you into milestones and rushing you into growing up. Maybe it’s because I realize use how fast time goes, and I don’t want to miss a moment. Either way, I cannot believe that you are already nine months old, and I am amazed at how many things you know how do to! You are quite the eater, little lady. You take down giant bowls of rice cereal or oatmeal at mealtimes. You eat fistfuls of puffs. You chomp on Cheerios (but just throw them around if we put too many on your tray at once - the temptation is too great!). You eat pouches. Just in the last few ...

It hasn't been the best day. So I baked brownies. This morning, Sam and I waged epic battle over what shirt to wear. He insisted short sleeves, I insisted long sleeves. This led to an out and out refusal to wear a shirt at all. After about an hour of pleading, yelling, whispering, drawer slamming, bribery, guilt trips, reverse psychology, love & logic, and every other parenting maneuver (good, bad, and ugly)...he still was wearing no shirt. So I did what any reasonable parent would do. I picked him up, carried my shoeless and shirtless child to the car, and strapped him into the car seat, throwing a pair of shoes and a long-sleeved shirt into the front seat of the car. I put Ellie in her car seat and away we went. I naively believed that Sam would calm down during the drive and feel compelled to put on shoes and shirt when we got to school. Ha. He spent the whole drive demanding that I turn around, go home, and find him a short-sleeved shirt. We got to school and he r...

It is 9:53 p.m. Both kiddos are asleep. The baby monitor is quiet. The dryer is tumbling with the last of the laundry. The living room lights are dim and cozy. I am stretched out on the couch with a cat at my feed, my knitting bag sitting next to me, ready for action. The remote control is also sitting next to me, in case I want a little background noise, but for now, the quiet is nice. I should be enjoying the moment and looking forward to an hour or so of unwind time before heading up to bed. But instead, my heart just won't quiet down and my brain can't settle, and I keep neurotically looking to the baby monitor, to catch any sound before it happens. And why? Because Sam said his tummy hurt. We watched the end of Finding Nemo tonight, and ate some popcorn. He was happy and sweet and wonderful. He was full of energy tonight, and was in great spirits. He played nicely with Ellie. He was helpful. He was funny. He was a good listener as Matt read him bedtime stories, and e...