Mommy and Sweet Pea

A week ago, Sweet Pea and I took a trip to my hometown, to visit my family. Average had to work, so it was just us gals. Sweet Pea did great on the drive both ways. It is about a 4-hour drive, and I learned my lesson from past trips and planned for about 3 stops, and to be driving during her nap. It worked out! I actually enjoyed her company in the car most of the time, as she pointed out sights along the road, motorcycles, and told me little stories (apparently everyone in our family, grandparents included, will be getting different colored motorcycles and riding around with bunnies). There was no screaming at all. Either she's growing up, or I'm getting better at knowing what is needed to keep little ones happy in the car. Probably both. Here are some photos from our adventure: She's all packed and ready to go The viewpoint in Port Orford - our last pit stop on the way down. We decided we might as well go put our feet in the sand, so... We did! Barefoot i...

Finishing projects that have been on the to-do list for months, like cleaning the car and touching up the paint in my bedroom Sunny weather after days of dreariness Sweet Pea NOT throwing up today after being sick yesterday I exercised! Picking strawberries and raspberries in the back yard with my daughter Sweet Pea took a 2+ hour nap (rare!), allowing me to shower, and accomplish the things on my to-do list Making popsicles out of leftover fruit smoothie No morning sickness or nausea today. I am 12.5 weeks pregnant :)

Hanging out in bed the other morning, my child says to me: "I'm a doggy, Mama. I'm a doggy." Then she licks my face. She likes to talk on two phones at a time. These phones are usually actually calculators, cups, toy walkie-talkies, toy food, or whatever is handy. A funny joke right now is to point at me and say, "That's dada," then point at her dad and say "And that's Mama." We eat imaginary chips and pretzels that she finds everywhere: on the ground, in the bath, under the table, in books. Anything remotely counter-like becomes a restaurant from which she serves us. "What do you want, Mama?" then she runs off to retrieve the imagined item, goes back behind the "counter," and hands us empty air. Make believe is fun!

After more than a week of dreary, rainy weather, the Willamette Valley is finally sunny and warm this afternoon. I should be outside, catching up on the massive amounts of weeding I need to do, playing with Sweet Pea and Glen in the sunshine, and brutally murdering the slugs and snails that are trying to eat my teeny tiny plants. Instead, I am inside, catching up on uploading photos to facebook, since I haven't updated in about two months. Sweet Pea is playing with my makeup bag. Even though I rarely wear makeup, she is obsessed with it. On Fridays at her daycare the big girls get to play with makeup, so she thinks it is the coolest thing ever. Our plans for tomorrow include the final toddler dance class, family music time and new books from the library, a meeting with a possible doula client, and a 3-year-old birthday party. It will be a fun, full day! Sunday is open so far, which is good because maybe I'll actually get to some of the yard work that needs doing. I am just so...

My husband and I both lived large chunks of our own childhoods without a television. We talked about it before we even planned on children of our own in any kind of concrete terms, and agreed: kids don't need to watch TV, and shouldn't watch it very often. We managed to keep Sweet Pea TV-free until a month or so before our flight to Hawaii. My brilliant plan for entertaining her on the flight was watching shows on the iPod touch, so we started warming her up to the idea well in advance. Somehow, between then and now we have progressed to her watching an episode of Sesame Street or Cat in the Hat on Neflix on demand (we don't have cable and only get a couple of channels) most days. How did this happen? As with most habits (and vices), it was gradual. She started asking for Elmo more often, and we started turning to it more often as something to occupy her while we cooked, cleaned, etc. Confession: I have even left her inside with the TV while I mowed the lawn (I used to ...

"Rose, do you have a plan?" Average asked, as I began aggressively yanking sheets up plastic up out of our front flower bed. No, I didn't. All I knew was that I didn't want plastic in my way anymore as I tried to plant my three new flowers, and I didn't want to see it poking up out of the ground, or pull chunks of it up as I was trying to weed, as I had been doing all afternoon. I can accept that plastic has many uses, but I don't want my garden to be one of them. Over time it loses its functionality as a weed deterrent, and slowly breaks down but never goes away. I have ranted about this before. By the end, I had filled half of our garbage can with plastic, unearthed a broken section of drainpipe for our gutters, and turned over all of the bark mulch (apparently barkamulch is not a real word) in the area next to our house so it looks like new again! Luckily I married a man who can make a plan, and he brought out a rake and a shovel and helped me ...

I saw a commercial for an absolutely idiotic product the other day. Sorry to the people who invented these, but seriously? Disposable paper towels for your home bathroom? Don't we already use too much paper with our kitchen paper towels, our toilet paper, and our paper napkins? I have been trying to get away from using disposable products, not trying to find ways to bring more into my life. We do still have paper towels in our kitchen, and I use them occasionally for greasy or dirt messes in the kitchen, but I mostly try to use cloth towels, napkins, and cleaning rags. They do just as good or better of a job, don't fall apart in your hands, and don't need to be constantly replaced (costing money and natural resources). Why in the world would you want to add ANOTHER costly disposable product to your bathroom, when most people already have plenty of good hand towels? The commercial shows many people using the towels after not thoroughly washing their hands. OK, that is ki...