December 6, 2008

And breathe . . .

Let's catch up.

The Monday before thanksgiving (or was it Wednesday) Jack and I built a snowman in the front yard. The kid LOVES to play in the snow. He hugged the snowman (there will be photos on my photo blog if I ever get it updated), patted the snowman and built a deep attachment to him. As I set him up for a final photo before naptime, he put his hand on the snowman and inadvertently tipped him over. He looked up at me as if to say, "WHAT DID I JUST DO?!" His lip started to quiver and he struggled to hold it together. And he did. I think it's the worst to see your child wanting to cry, but holding it in. It's almost less painful for you as a parent if they just let it all out!

Thanksgiving was great! It was so nice to be away from a computer screen for a while . . . though if you ask my family, they'll probably tell you I spent a lot of time in front of the computer. We went to my parents house on Wednesday and stayed through Friday. Family came to their house and we ate . . . a lot. On Friday morning, my mom, sister and I went shopping with all of the black Friday crazies. And, I will say that we got some tremendous deals. My parents flew to Puerto Rico for their cruise on Saturday, so when we left on Friday they sent us home with ALL of the leftovers. Jack refused the turkey on Sunday because he was so sick of it. The highlight of the weekend had to be Jack saying "gobble, gobble" every time someone said "turkey." It came out more like "Lollal, lollal."

Jack is pretty much a different kid since I last wrote about him. He communicates so well and I feel like we're in a virtual explosion of language growth right now. He says "tadaaa" whenever he does something . . . whether it be good or bad. I walked into his room and he had pulled everything out of his closet. I said, "What did you do?!" And he looked up at me and said "tadaaa." He constantly wants to see football, basketball, baseball or hockey on tv and identifies the sports pretty well. I seriously feel like he's changing so fast right now, and I'm so busy, that there's no way of recording all of the fun stuff he says. He's also become more ornery and will just collapse to the floor in a fit of drama that I've never seen before when we ask him to do something he'd rather not do.

His 18 month check up was on Tuesday. He's grown 2 inches in the last 3 months and gained a little under a pound. He's still off the charts for height, but he's in the 95th percentile for weight. Yay for being on the charts! I didn't get to talk to the doctor as much as I would have liked about vaccines because I wasn't as prepared as I would have liked and I was going on about 4 hours of sleep. But I did find out that the flu shots at the office are thimerosol-free and that's the only one that he needed.

After his appointment, we took him down the street to the Treehouse which was a first for us. It was fantastic. It's this huge indoor playground, but it was way better than a playground. We were there right when it opened and stayed for 1 1/2 hours, so Jack was one of five kids there the whole time. It might not have been as great if there were more kids. There was a two year old who shoved Jack down 6 or 7 times. Yikes. When telling my mother-in-law about it, she told me that Jack actually pushes Emma down sometimes. Yikes, again.

Last night, we did our annual live nativity at camp. It's a ride through on a horse drawn wagon . . . and it is COLD outside. Did anyone hear my radio interview on Friday about it? We taped it on Wednesday and I totally forgot to listen yesterday! It's usually the thing that kicks off the Christmas season for me. This year, it's the thing that is helping restore the Christmas spirit that had already begun to wane.

The past week has been insane, but I am seriously so thankful for the business. But I'm not going to lie . . . I need sleep. So, so badly. I have two photo sessions to process, one youth camp brochure to finish up and many card orders that I'm waiting to hear back on. I have been confronted with a few stinkers this season, but overall, I have worked for some lovely people and have found some great new blogs!

Speaking of blogs . . . I'm going to try and catch up with the 1772 blog posts in my reader. Seriously, you people write a lot.

2 comments:

Sara Neufeld said...

It's good to hear from you again. :)

Anonymous said...

glad you're back!