Three, No Wait Five, Things

1. Baby girl and I have hit Week 32!

 

I need to start taking pictures in the morning, these 7 p.m. post-work selfies aren't as flattering to my ankles. What's happening with the veins in my feet down there?

Things continue to go well: weight gain oddly on track, stretch marks non-existent, swelling keeping to a minimum- the careful three-point-turn I have to execute each time I want to turn over in bed doesn't seem too bothersome by comparison. It's all going so well that I'm terrified I'm going to think it would be a good idea to do again in a few years.

2. Homework is so hot in my house right now.

Landon comes home with a little booklet of worksheets each Monday. He doesn't need to bring them back or turn them in, they're just to show us a bit of what the class is working on each week and to encourage parents to work with their kids at home. Landon LOVES them. He does the whole book on Mondays and we spend the rest of the week coloring pictures and talking about the day he'll get more homework.

 

Claire, enamored of her older brother and quite the mini-me, immediately requested "homework" from her teachers at school. Yesterday, Ms. Susan obliged and Claire raced out of her classroom with three precious sheets clutched in her hot little hands. Where they remained for the next two hours while we drove to the rental car place, turned in the car, switched the car seats to a transport car, drove to the body shop where my previously battered Sonata was waiting for me, settled accounts in a very tiny waiting room, switched car seats again, and drove home. At 6:40 p.m., 2 hours after picking the kids up from school, an exhausted me sat on the couch and smiled while I watched the kids carefully and painstakingly complete their assignments.

 

It reminded me of my very first homework assignment- 3rd grade, Mrs. Ness's class, a one page sheet with names, phone numbers, and business needs. We were supposed to get our parents' big Southwestern Bell Yellow Page phone books and fill in the missing information for each entry on the sheet. I was SO excited. I took that giant phone book, my mom's clipboard, and my worksheet outside, sat in the MIDDLE of my front yard, and completed it in a location where everyone could see how big and grown up I was. I still remember how I felt sitting out there, and how I lingered over it long after I was done so that my dad would see me doing my homework just like the awesome high school kids at church talked about when he drove up the driveway after work.

I told JP that story and he looked at me incredulously and then laughed. At me, I think, not with me. We had very different feelings about school.

Our blocks are now considered a "center" just like in school

3. Claire is three and I love age three.

I can't remember if I have a favorite age, but maybe three is it? 9 months, 18 months, two, three, and four for sure. Claire at 3 is just so darn fun and sweet and creative and BUSY. I snap random blurry pictures of her because I can't keep track of what she's doing most of the time and I don't want to forget (even if I don't actually know).

 

Here she is having a ten minute imaginary convo with her Gigi. It sounded so real when I first walked into the room that I thought she'd stolen my iPhone from my purse, unlocked it, and dialed her Gigi's number. I wouldn't have put it past her at all.

She is very VERY into her babies. They are fed and changed and rocked and read to on a regular basis. And she is EXTREMELY impatient with my slow gestation of "our" baby and is pretty sure I'm taking forever on purpose and holding her little sister hostage in my tummy. We talk about the baby at least 10 times a day and she and Landon have already worked out their first response system to when the baby cries at night. As Landon explained to me a few weeks ago: "Mom, if the baby cries, we'll go in first and check on her. And if we can't fix it, then we'll come and get you, okay? Don't come in first. We can do it." Apparently they'd been talking about it and planning at night in their beds.

Babies with a high SIDS risk are randomly put to bed all over our house; this one was found by the TV

4. JP has temporarily quit swimming and taken up a martial art

Krav Maga, to be precise (I just had to google it, turns out I was spelling it wrong in my head). I don't really have a picture for this one, so I offer up Landon's self-portrait with its intriguing blue nose, which is similar to the color of JP's forearms after Tuesday's "fighting skills" class.

It's weird, not having him swim. He had pretty much stopped going to practice when summer lessons kicked up, but to actually withdraw his USS membership was... strange. He's been an active swimmer since I met him in 2001. But he's been having some health issues and decided taking an official break might be good while we figure out what's going on. Plus he's wanted to do Krav Maga since he googled "what martial art is Jason Bourne doing in the Bourne Identity" a million years ago. He loves the classes- he's gone every day since he started (turns out it wasn't that he was addicted to swimming, he's addicted to physical challenges and swimming was his drug of choice for a couple decades) and was so excited when he got home from "fight" night on Tuesday that he pretty much bounced around our TV room with a giant smile while I read my book for 45 minutes before he could take his shower. If a 6'3" man in a black Krav Maga uniform showing off fighting stances can be adorable (and he can), he was it.

5. I've discovered digital library lending and it has changed my life.

I've read 4 books in the last 5 days and they didn't cost me a DIME. I'm in love. I need book recommendations- I've been on a JD Robb/Nora Roberts "In Death" series kick and it's starting to give me crazy dreams so maybe something a little lighter?

I need to update my blog more often, my posts keep getting too long, but it's 11:30 and I need to go to bed, so editing will have to wait until next time.