Five Buckys

"A portrait of my children, once a week, every week, in 2014." August: He has been going to the gym's kid zone and loving it for the past month. And I gloriously spend the toddlerless hour walking the treadmill, rubbing my belly, and listening to pandora. That is, until this week when he decided he'd just rather not. I attempted both Monday and Tuesday to drop him off to which August clung to me like a spider monkey and said a teary "byebyebye" to all the kind workers while pointing to the direction of the door. We left promptly both days. Yesterday evening, Jared attempted to take him and arrived home in no less than 15 minutes after he left saying, 'nope I couldn't leave him either'. This might just make us look like weak first time parents but whatever, we will fly our flag high and proud and quit the gym. Baby: Jared and I went through a box of August's newborn clothes. And the tiny-ness of it all hit us hard. We are comple...

Jared and I got iphones last weekend and then Jared spent a sneaky three minutes in the bathroom mirror taking selfies on mine to surprise me. And I don't know, I think he's cute. We took our little dapper child to the Dogwood Festival. He was precisely 2 inches too short to ride anything. (sorry, shorty) But, he did a fair amount of pointing and saying "Dere it is!" at every attraction as if he had been looking for them his whole life.  Jared decided that we needed to do something carnival cliche and since the cotton candy was out-of-this-world 'spensive, we decided on a good ol fashion carnival game. Jared played while Gus earnestly applauded his efforts.  Surely thanks to Gus's sideline cheering, Jared won! A fish. I honestly thought it would die before we even made home, but it is alive and well on our mantle. Gus named him "Nanana"and frantically runs to me every morning pointing at Nanana and the fish food and saying "dere it...

"A portrait of my children, once a week, every week, in 2014"

At 7:30am I wake up to a bed all by myself. Well, all by myself plus my squirming fetus child who only stops moving for the occasional contraction. I stretch out my legs only to get charley horses in both calves. I loudly hurumph myself awake. I roll my large body slowly to my feet and feel the frigid air that is Virginia's April morning. I waddle downstairs to find my smiling, pajama-ed toddler drinking his chocolate milk and squealing with a dramatic point across the room to me "dere she is!" I smile and kiss his head then tell the sleeping lump on the couch, also known as my darling husband, to get up and get in the shower. It takes me longer to find my inner-morning person these days.  The toddler demands to shower with his father every morning. Jared politely agrees even though I know it isn't what he prefers. As he tells it, August likes to sit on Jared's feet and stick his little fingers between Jared's toes. Jared has no inner-morning person to lur...

"A portrait of my children, once a week, every week, in 2014" I am one week behind on the weekly portraits. So here's week 14 & 15 to catch up. Along with some toddler updates.  August at 21 months.  He wakes up mad until he's had his chocolate milk. Seriously, don't even make eye contact with him. Of course after his first sip he is as friendly as ever. Even he knows mornings are hard. He can navigate an iPad, the little millennial.  He sniffs his nose when he sees a puppy dog.  He cries if you go outside and don't invite him.  He smiles if you whisper silly nothings in his ears.  He is squirmy during diaper changes.  He sings along to "Itsy Bitsy Spider" and performs a very dramatic "washed the spider out" .  He is so sweet and calm with little babies, he puts both hands on his knees and bends down to their level and talks softly to them. I'm not sure where he learned this, but it makes me so proud to wa...

"A portrait of my children, once a week, every week, in 2014" August: He has become quite a picky eater lately. But if there's dip, he'll try it. If the dip is peanut butter, he'll love it.  Baby: We joined a gym recently which offers a prenatal yoga class. It has been good for my growing body to maintain flexibility. But, mostly it is nice to have that hour a week to zone out and think about this baby girl who I will love as much as Gus. It is so hard to imagine that, but in those classes with my mind solely on her, I begin to believe it. 

There's a little flower that started to sprout out of our rock garden about a month ago. Even after two late winter snows and little toddler hands trying hard to pick her, she has kept growing. She's a resilient little flower. Now she is bloomed and drinking in the sun and happily greets me when I step outside to throw out diapers. She is a real beaut. I draw daily inspiration from her strong, thick stem and her happy purple flowers. She's my reminder that we grow and persevere. Even when it snows late into the season. Even when we spend most of our day throwing out diapers.  This photo was taken on a night we had a date planned. In all the excitement of getting out and going to dinner, we put our toddler to bed 20 minutes earlier without knowing it. The toddler knew. He cried and cried and when we went to check on him he wanted up. We tried to convince him with songs and stories and gentle rocking to go fall asleep but after an hour's worth of coaxing, he convin...

"A portrait of my children, once a week, every week, in 2014." August: I took him to storytime at the library. As soon as we walked into the class, he ran and started booty dancing and clapping in the middle of the storytime circle, causing everyone to laugh. He then walked around to each baby and patted them softly on their heads and told them hello. And I just really like him a lot. Baby: I was laying on the couch at the end of a particularly exhausting day, when August scooted up beside me and laid his head on my tummy and whispered things into my belly button. Then his sister started to kick and move like crazy and he giggled softly and smiled really big. And I have been living off of that sweet moment for days. Days, I tell ya!