john's mom works

kitchen bandit 3.0 my dear sweet little bean, you are two! you are two. how have we had you for two years -- the unexpected perfect capper for our little family? i still think you are in my belly, or maybe a teensy little baby bean in my carrier on my chest. but no! you are a dude now. a HAPPY dude: i've never known a baby (ehem, toddler) who smiled so much, and laughed so much. your sparkly little eyes light up so bright and you brighten everyone's days, from your family to your friends to your teachers to strangers at stores who are taken with your little impish grin. you are fearless and very big for your little body. i think you think you are the same as your brothers, that anything they can do you can do and nothing is stopping you. you have discovered the pool this summer, and you love to swim and "play water" and splash in our kiddie pool in the backyard, too. you love koalas. you call them kolalas. it makes me smile every time you see one in a book...

appropos of nothing, here is a pirate. because he's cute, that's why. if you are facebook friends with my husband, you've probably heard the news: our little family is relocating to dallas next month. actually, my husband will be leaving a little sooner, to start his new job, while john and i pack up the house to get ready to move. i have never felt so very ambivalent about anything in my life. i am so excited for the opportunity -- my husband will be working at a job he's really excited about, in a field he really loves. dallas is a big city, so there will be opportunities for me as well -- tho i will likely not job hunt til after the baby arrives in october. because let's be serious: would YOU hire a six-months-pregnant lady? i am excited about the quality of public schools in the area we will be in. i am excited for the overall well-being of our family, because we certainly wouldn't choose to move if it weren't going to be an overall boon for ...

sleeping peacefully despite the MASSIVE quantity of animals in his crib. and the santa pjs. shush, they still fit. reasons i might be crazy: #1 i love to take pictures of john when he's sleeping. don't get me wrong - i don't interrupt him in the night to creepily snap stalker pics of my sleeping love. but if he's sleeping late in the morning, and it's about time for him to wake up anyway, i might just surreptitiously mamarazzi my way into his room for a little peek. he's so peaceful and sweet and still, i just can't stand it. reasons i might be crazy: #2 since i've been unemployed, i've been seeking out all sorts of ways to save money. one of the obvious places to look was at my cosmetics -- if you've known me a while, you know i use an awesome botanically based product line that's amazing for my skin and that i love ... but like most things, you pay for that quality. "so, self," i thought to myself, "maybe there are...

ingenuity: fitting two crackers perfectly between the tines of your for so you can eat them at the same time. john has recently started singing songs with us, instead of just by himself or wanting us to sing them. i think the first one was the til-then-obnoxious "i love you" song from barney. i've always hated that song. but somehow, delivered in a sweet little sincere boy voice, it suddenly is pretty freaking great. we progressed to the alphabet song, which john can now sing just about perfectly. he sometimes skips t-u-v, but he mostly sings it along with us beautifully. same with twinkle twinkle little star (tho in john's rendition, it's twinkle little little star). but just the other night, something happened that was pretty amazing for me. john requested, and then started singing along with, one of the lullabies i wrote for him. it shouldn't surprise me that he has learned these songs, since i've sung then to him almost every single nigh...

i love a kid who, before his third birthday, recognizes that fridays are cause for dancing. this morning we put one of john's "toddler tunes" cds on and he was listening in the living room, but he got tired of it and brought me another cd - the "anxious dog music" cd we tried for buddy back at the height of his craziness. "mommy, i want to listen to DOG music!" said my gleeful little bug. so i put it in the cd player, and the twinkly "calming" piano started. and john said, "i want to dance, but i need my red tutu!" you know i am not a mom built to deny a boy his tutu. so pjs and tutu and all, we danced around the living room for a while. we did spins, and leaps, and bows. after a little while, i looked at the clock. "mama's gotta go get ready, my love," i said reluctantly. "we have to get you to school." he looked at me innocently and said, "i wear my tutu to school?" i talked him o...

so last night was kind of a big deal at our house. i picked john up from school a little early, and he immediately started telling me how he was going to go see "ernie and bert and elmo and big bird and all of our friends, mommy!" so we made our way to sesame street live, and to the "meet and greet" session beforehand, so not only did john get to watch sesame street on stage, he actually got to play with some of the characters! at first, admittedly, he didn't quite know what to make of elmo and cookie monster. they were, after all, somewhat larger than they appear on even the biggest of tvs. in fact, when i asked him if he wanted to go see elmo and cookie, he said, "no, mommy!" in a nervous little voice. if elmo talked, i think he would have said, "i won't eat you, i swear! but watch out for the blue guy." of course i didn't listen to his no, but forced the issue. isn't that what any self-respecting mom would d...

if you know me, you will know why this particular video makes me the proudest mama in town: i'm sorta partial to the cello, you see. that's my ax he's playing, actually. and while i certainly don't know if he'll ever want to pick up my passion and play for real, it's pretty freaking cool to see his little self jammin' on the old girl. too cool.

i have started and abandoned this post about 42 times. it shouldn't be so hard to write - there's no big news or bad news or excitement. just a moderate little apology for disappearing of the face of the planet, and a modicum of catching up to do. but here's the thing: i hate catching up posts. they feel like boring ol' essays on "what i did on my summer vacation." no life, no vim, no vigor, no excitement. so - you get no catching up. what you do get are these fine videos of our crazy monkey dancing to the floats and bands on the macy's thanksgiving day parade. clip 1: breaking it down clip 2: interpretive dance (to the oh-so-striking strains of the native american recognition float)

this truck will probably be joined with some boxes to make a train. just wait. one of the most frequently uttered phrases in our house of late has been this: "all aboard!" john has been a big fan of thomas the really useful engine for a while, but just recently he's taken a shine to trains in general. he chugs around the house with his yellow dump truck, which he uses to push boxes and laundry baskets and what ever else around. he loves to chug-a-chug-a-chug-a-chug-a chooo chooo.  so when i was in the bathroom this morning - which shares a wall with john's room - and i heard through the wall, "all aboard!" i wasn't too surprised. but there was extra glee when john came running into my room with a train whistle that i'd forgotten he had. he was all excited because it had a train painted on the side ... so imagine his joy when i showed him that it actually makes a train sound.  he struggled with it at first. couldn't quite get the gr...

my be-hoodied goof eating strawberries. yesterday after school/work, john and i went to stride rite to get him some new shoes. my husband and i were beginning to suspect that his size 6.5 mediums were getting too small for him, and i just couldn't shake the memory of taking john in thinking he needed a 4.5 to discover he needed a 6. mom of the year moments right there. stride rite is in the next town over in a direction john and i don't travel very often. in fact, i think the last time we were over that way was when we went to the balloon festival back in september. so imagine my surprise as we were getting off the interstate when john said, "i see balloons here, mommy." thinking he saw some balloons flying over a store or sometime, i said, "where, john? i don't see them." and he said, "no, i see balloons here one day." at this point i was a little amazed that he remembered the balloon festival at all. but his next words ...

such a charming little fellow daddy and john had an awesome afternoon today - since dad gets off early on fridays, he picked john up early and john got to ride his tricycle and stack box blocks up higher than daddy's head and generally hang out and enjoy a fall afternoon. so by the time i made it home from work, there was some snuggling to be had on the couch (we watched yo gabba gabba, which is actually quite entertaining ...) and after daddy picked up some papa murphy's pizza, we were all hanging out when i smelled a certain ... funk. i said to john, "did you poo poo?" he said, "yes mommy." i said, "time for a fresh diaper - you stink!" and john said, "peeeyew." and i said, "that's right -- and john interrupted and said, "no! wait. not pee you. pee me! peeeeemeeee." guess we're getting the hang of those pronouns ...

a collection of funny faces. i dare you be in a bad mood after you look at those pics. i double dog dare you.

first, a little bit of background. my mom (john's grammie) is famous for her awesomely ridiculous silly videos that she sends for john. grammie is a creative, funny, lady, and her videos reflect that personality. this was last night's video from grammie: (i can't seem to make it un-sideways without spending way more time editing than i have to do that right now. sorry!) needless to say ... john and i found this utterly hysterical. so after several minutes of pure laughter, we decided to make a video to send back to grammie: the crazy wiggles in the middle are when john started attacking the phone while i tried to record him. after we recorded the video, we watched it a couple of times, and i'm not going to lie - john and i cackled like hyenas for a good ten minutes. basically, a good time was had by all. look out for that chicken in the jungle. he'll get you every time.

john's been at his drums a lot more lately - doing different things with each hand, and this evening he started to use his foot on the bass drum pedal while drumming on the snare and tom - very cool. it's so neat to watch him discover the different sounds he can make ... really an amazing process. and if that's not cute enough, try this on for size: thursday night, my husband had a meeting that ran late and he didn't get home until after john had gone to bed. john woke up just in time to give him a hug before he left for work friday morning. as we were driving to school friday morning, john asked me, "daddy coming?" i said, "no, baby, daddy's at work, but you'll see daddy after school." john responded, "no, see daddy tommorrow." in a heart-wrenchingly sad voice. i said, "baby, did you miss daddy yesterday?" john said, "i miss daddy EVERYDAY, mommy." how's that for love??? (and as i told my ...

day 7: hubbard glacier, alaska so this wasn't technically an excursion - there is nowhere to get out at hubbard glacier. but the ship sails up a narrow channel for a couple of hours, and suddenly at the end is this monstrous beautiful blue glacier. how close a ship can get is different every day and dictated by the coast guard. this day, we got within a half-mile of it. and honestly ... that was plenty close. there are not words to capture the true scale of this crystalline beast. one of my few goals for the trip was achieved this day, too - my husband and i sat in a hot tub and watched the glacier outside. the air was cold (though not arctic) even in the aquadome, the water was hot, and the glacier was truly breathtaking. we even got to watch it calve several times, including one that was so big, the wave it created rocked the entire ship. it's hard to get the scale on these, but they're each at least about 5-8 feet tall, just floating in the sea around the ship. ...

day 6: skagway, alaska we spent the fourth of july in sleepy skagway, alaska, population approximately 800 (not including summertime visitors or 10,000 people from cruise ships that day!). the town featured such festivities as a railroad spike driving contest, a slow bike race, etc. quite the exiting time for a small town!  my husband and i chose to do a bike trip through nearby dyea, a beautiful temperate rain forest opening up on some tidal mud flats between the mountains. dyea used to be a mining town, but when the railroad was built in skagway around 1900, everyone moved from dyea to skagway and left next to nothing but a few relics behind. we didn't see any wildlife that day, but what breathtaking scenery again - are you tired of hearing that??? the mudflats and mountains and stream and ... gosh. can i go back? while my husband and i biked, grammie took john on the adventure of HIS lifetime - a dog-sledding excursion. they rode a summer training sled pulle...

day 5: juneau, alaska so eleven 30-ton humpback whales synchronized swimming is a pretty tough thing to top, but we figured out how to do it: our five-glacier flightseeing tour on a seaplane, culminating in an incredible wild-caught fresh local salmon feast at the taku lodge. amazing scenery, incredible food, topped up with a close-up black bear sighting ... how could this possibly be my life???  i don't even like salmon, but the stuff we had at taku lodge was delicious. if that's what salmon tasted like in "real life," i'd eat it every day. grammie and my husband and i ate like pigs and soaked it all in. the trusty seaplane that carried us over the amazing scenery dorky johnsmom on a seaplane mountains below one of five glaciers we saw (on the left) the amazingly gorgeous braided taku river our lunchtime view from taku lodge - the aptly named taku glacier moosehead overlooking our lunch seats enjoying some russian tea ...

day 4: icy strait point, alaska icy strait point is a completely fictional town. it is not too far from hoonah, an actual small town, but it is in fact an old cannery that the cruise line purchased to use as a docking station for this particular stop.  icy strait point! looks like ... a ... cannery. there's no population at icy strait point. there IS the "world's tallest zip line," but i didn't partake of that. instead, we elected to go whale watching.  when i was a kid, my grandparents used to take our family whale watching off of cape cod, so that is something near and dear to my heart. i was really hoping the whales would put on a good show, especially since john was with us for this excursion. we got on our little whale-watching boat and set out. john and grammie exploring the boat. within literally moments (maybe 5 minutes? maybe less?) we saw a whale off near the shore, splashing and playing. he wasn't super close, but we checke...

as you may know if you've ever been on a cruise, a whole lot of the fun actually takes place off the ship, in the ports, on excursions. and this trip to alaska was jam-packed with adventures, for sure. day 3: ketchikan, alaska our first stop along the way was ketchikan. and ketchikan offered something that caught my eye the instant i saw it advertised: snorkeling. in alaska. did you catch that? who the heck snorkels in alaska? THIS girl! (along with my husband, other-one-n, cousin d, and cousin s - my fellow bad-a travelers and underwater partners in crime.) to answer your question, yes, the water was freezing cold. but the good news is, we didn't feel that at all through these sexy mammajammas: 7mm of neoprene goes a long way to keep a body warm. the whole crew all decked out. don't we look like superheros or x-men or SOMETHING cool? in all seriousness, the wetsuits kept us remarkably comfortable, and we saw some very cool stuff under the 47 degree wa...

so one of the blogs i follow is a lovely lady known to the internet as c. jane . she rocks my socks. and today she has a guest blogger, her neighbor janna. janna is a social worker who has worked with all kinds of eating disorders and body image issues, and her post is on body image, etc. it has triggered quite an interesting conversation in the "pieces of opinion" comment section. all my life but especially post-baby, body image is a major struggle for me (like most everyone, i think, when you get right down to it.) so whether you agree or disagree with janna, c. jane, or me, i think this is an awesome bit of conversation to hear and be a part of. go here to read c. jane's blog.