Bubble trouble

Learning to blow bubbles... priceless!

Read more...

Ma-ma-marvelous

My daughter - my sweet, loving, smart, beautiful, sensitive, generous, funny daughter - just learned two new words! The sweetest sounding words in the whole wide world...

Mmmmmaa - that's for me, mama
aaaDaa - that's for Rob, daddy

All the silly speech therapy games are working! She's making new sounds and putting new letter sounds together to make words.

It's God's grace all over my baby girl and I'm so happy. I'm so proud of her - I'm just bursting at the seams.

Thank you Jesus.

Read more...

Much ado about nothing

Sometimes I have a hard time finding things in my day that are post-worthy. Do you know what I mean? Here are some of the posts I considered (and then rejected) throughout the week...

Blown away
Deep thoughts about my new ceiling fan

Snot again
Just like clockwork, on the Tuesday morning after attending Sunday school, Janie is sick

What were they thinking?
Top ten punishments for parents who send their sick kids to Sunday school

Attack of the playground equipment
Clumsy moms who injure themselves while playing with their toddler on the toddler-sized play structure at the park

Read more...

It's a jolly holiday with Janie

I think I've mentioned this before - Janie's favorite movie in the whole wide world is Mary Poppins. Loves it. Loves it so much that she has created her own dance moves to go along with it.

• She does the high-stepping dance walk that Mary and Bert do while dancing through the countryside chalk drawing.


• She waddles just like the little penguin waiters.


• She can do a spot-on impersonation of a chimney sweep dancing on the rooftop.


• And my favorite, she can (try to) balance on one foot while gliding on a turtle across the pond.

In an impressive effort to bring her turtle dance to the next level, she recently added a prop:

Yep, there she is standing on her stuffed turtle.

To me, she looks just like Mary Poppins.

Read more...

Life lessons

Two important things I've learned this week:

1. Always check the pockets of your husband's pants before throwing them into the washer.

2. Cell phones and washing machines are not a good combo.

Read more...

The freeze

So Janie's new favorite song is The Freeze. It's a cute song that we discovered during playtime at Gymboree, and Rob tracked it down on a pretty obscure (read: not available on iTunes) CD. It's a full-on dance number, and at various intervals, dancers are supposed to... you guessed it - FREEZE!

According to Janie, the best way to enjoy this musical event is to bop around in a circle to the beat. Bop around the dining room table. Bop around the ottoman in her bedroom. Or just bop around the living room. The experience can be taken to a whole new level with the addition of maracas or tambourines. And of course, it's only truly fun if mom and dad bop around with her.

Rob and I willingly comply, of course. And if you could peek in our windows throughout the evening you would see us bopping around in a circle, shaking our maracas like crazy people and freezing into some very silly poses.

It just occured to me however, that if you really did peek in our windows, you probably wouldn't be able to see Janie enjoying this music and dance extravaganza. She's less than three feet tall and that means she's below the windowsill and can't be seen.

So to our neighbors it must look like Rob and I enjoy bopping around the house while shaking maracas and stopping to stike a pose. Just the two of us. Gosh, they must think we're wierd!

Read more...

Celebrity-in-training

Is that Nicole Richie? Nope - it's my little celebrity-in-training! Janie loves to wear sunglasses, and like any good super star, she wears them indoors too. I mean, it's important to look our best while shopping for diapers, right?

Thanks grandma for the cute sunglasses!

Read more...

Emergency rooms

We're on the mend! The sneezing, sniffling and coughing are almost a thing of the past. Yahoo!

And my toe is much better. Maybe it wasn't broken after all. Just massively stubbed. Did I mention I have a seriously low pain tolerance? Good thing I didn't go to the emergency room. :)

Speaking of emergency rooms, here is a blog that Rob wrote today that made me laugh...
______________________________________________

so- a couple of months ago, i came back from lunch thinking, "OW! my chest hurts!"
it hurt so bad I went home for the day. i took a bunch of advils and went to sleep.
i woke up at like seven and i was still in massive chest pain.
deanna called the help nurse and they thought i might have heart arrhythmia-
they thought i should come in right away.
but i didn't.
i went back to sleep- hoping it was some sort of asthma attack or something that would go away.
i woke up at 2am- STILL having chest pains. i was a little scared- was this a heart attack?
i drove myself to the ER.
i was the only one there.
it still took forever.
they hooked me up to a heart machine, but my heart looked fine.
they listened to my lungs, but they sounded fine.
they kept asking me, "from one to ten, how bad is your pain?"
i would say "like 5- but its chest pain, isn't that a bad thing?"
so they got a doctor to see me. he was super cool.
he asked me all of the questions that the nurses asked me and listened to my heart just like they did.
then he asked, "umm, can I poke you in the ribs?"
"go for it" I said. and he did.
i said "AAAACK! WHOA! what the HECK WAS THAT?!"
he asked me "did you lift anything today?"
and I was like "I DID!"
I was in our cluttery youth closet and there was a table that i wanted that was against the wall.
I didn't want to clear a path to the wall, so I reached over:
kajabi-ropes,
earth balls,
hockey sticks,
water balloon launchers,
un-mixed-jell-o,
cart with seats attached to them,
and fog machines to get to it.
then I lifted the heavy table over all of the clutter
and in mid-lift I thought to myself,
"I think I hurt myself."
and I did.
I pulled a little muscle in between my ribs-
hence the level 5 pain-
no asthma-
no heart arrhythmia or heart attack-
just a tiny pulled muscle.


ok- fast forward to today.
my little girl is a dare-devil.
she doesn't care if she is being thrown 10 feet in the air
or swung around by her ankles or wrists-
its all good. she's wild.
so today I was swinging her around in her room and
PINCH!
that little rib muscle ripped again-
"AAAAAAAH!"
I screamed and handed her to deanna-
I slowly dropped the the ground face down-
"OWWWW!" "I'M IN PAIN!" I yelled-
i was hamming it up a little-
chris farley style.
janie was laughing from the spinning- and seeing me writhe in pain sent her into hysterics-
and if you've ever heard a 2-year old bust up laughing- its hilarious-
the instant cure for depression.
its funnier than laughing gas.
so then deanna started laughing hysterically- all the while, yours truly on the ground in semi-agony.
"deanna- stop laughing at me! I'M IN PAIN!" i said-
"i…can't…stop!"
"janie…is…cracking…me…up!" said deanna with tears in her eyes.
so deanna was cracking up-
which made janie laugh until she was snorting
and it all made me moan louder and bang my feet against the floor.
so in the end,
my hurt rib-muscle led to a funny memory.
the end?

Read more...

What a day

Janie is sick. Rob is sick. I am sick. We are all a bunch of sniffling, sneezing, coughing sickos!

Oh. And I think I broke my toe.

Read more...