throbbing

going on day 5 of intense and wicked headache. anyone have any suggestions? because i'm getting desperate.

there is also this, which is an article about wanting a stay at home husband. this makes me think several things.

thing 1: it isn't about the quantity of time, but the quality. my dad's a lawyer and i have never felt like i didn't get to know him well, see him often, spend time with him, etc. my dad is very, very, very good at quality time. and ryan is also good at this. he comes home, changes and spends the entire evening playing with the children and helping put them to bed. he is a quality dad.

thing 2: i can't remember what thing 2 is anymore. if you have an idea, let me know.

hurling

seth threw up this morning. six times in an hour. by his sixth puke the only thing coming up was stomach acid. it was the most heartbreaking thing. after each heave, he would turn towards me, reaching out with his fat little hands and curl into me.

so we are spending our day indoors; coloring pages, reading books and playing in the tent. ava is having a hard time understanding why we can't go somewhere. she's also having a hard time understanding why seth gets a bottle of water and she can't have one, too.

"i'm just going to have a little bit of seth's bottle, okay mom?" she says. after hearing that it is not okay she hotly stalks off to her tent saying, "i'm in my tent ONLY! no one else! i want a BOTTLE!" it's charming, even if she is threatening to cut me out of her presence.

so, in the spirit of fun, i'd like to collect as many terms for throwing up as we can think of. leave one in the comments.

mine: hurl.

he is six months

that is half a year.


my friend had a baby not too long ago and i took her a smoothie. then i held her baby. there's something about a tiny newborn baby that makes you reverent. so i held that tiny baby and felt reverent. and also, a tiny bit jealous. when did my baby get to be so big? it's enough to break my heart.

but when i see him smile so hard his face nearly cracks open just because he saw me, or when he grabs hold of the tablecloth and starts pulling an entire dinner for nine right onto the floor i can't help but hold him close, breathe deeply and then kiss the snot out of him.

what is it about my children that makes me want to dine on them?

and why, oh why must they grow so fast?

excuse me, i'm off to hold a child who just drooled his weight in saliva. and i promise you i will love every minute of it.

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water drops

guess what game she's playing

if you guessed that she was pretending to be mary and is pregnant with baby jesus, then give yourself a pat on the back!

oh, imagination. . .

love

this weekend included the following: sleeping in, the bank with chris, jamba juice and oatmeal with ava.

a joke. i said, "i married ryan for his money. and he had a kickin' bod." but no one got it, so i laughed alone and everyone else took me seriously. well, they should have.

a garden, a nap, valentines and an article finished (hooray!).

cookies, chocolates, cupcakes, pretzels dipped in chocolate.

these thoughts: i am loved. i have been my whole life. and on that day of love, i thought about how i will always be loved. and i wish that everyone could feel loved.

i love love.

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yes, i am that mother

and yes, i rock (because that is a pancake).

happy valentine's day!

two and a half

she mimics excellently. like the one time i turned on a disney video from youtube, but it turned out to be cinderella's wicked stepsisters doing their regular thing while put to the soundtrack of "shake your ass". i fumbled to shut it off, juggling seth a bit more roughly than i normally would only to have ava turn to me and say, "shake your ass, mommy? shake your ass?" it was awesome.

the other day she came in with an elmo laptop given to her by an uncle for her birthday, carrying it like a breifcase. "bye, mommy, i'm going to work!" she waved grandly, gave me a kiss, told me to have a good day and that she loved me, let herself out the front door and walked down our driveway to the sidewalk. once there, she seemed a bit confused. she has no idea where this "work" is, only that daddy, grandpas and jeremy seem to do this everyday. so she turned around, let herself back in to the house and cheered, "i'm home! let's play!"

to ava: thanks for sticking it out with me. i am like a fine wine: i mother better with age (apparently, it takes practice to be a mother. that's why seth is so lucky). also, i love you very much.

sister.

this makes me happy.

oh boy, this is a good one

you know when you're ten and you get new shoes and you spend all of your time commanding your mother to watch you run because your new shoes make you run way faster?

well, this weekend i got a camera and i keep commanding ryan, ava and seth to hold still and then showing them how my new camera makes me take pictures way better. i literally spent my weekend indoors, camera in hand, waiting for something amazing to happen so i could catch it on memory card. i almost took it to lunch to meet up with my now friend and former blog buddy but i thought that might be odd.

you want to hear something funny about my now friend? she has a daughter ava's age (that's not the funny part) and we often (without consulting eachother) buy the same shirts for our daughters. well, on saturday we went to old navy together and kept bumping in to one another while holding the same shirts (now you can laugh).

and that's how i spent my weekend.

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daddy and ava feet

another hike

this hike totally kicked my trash. i'm going to blame it on the fact that i was using the baby carrier that seth has grown out of and the fact that i wasn't dressed properly, but maybe it's that i'm just not that in shape. shame on me.

this is practically in my backyard. my backyard! how lucky is that?

at the end, ava got an ava-sized gatorade. this pleased her.

january's favorite

sister photo to this

ava's mexican grandpa

when we went to the zoo, we stopped at this place for lunch. it was a hole in the wall (not literally) mexican spot owned by a little old mexican lady and her husband, a little old mexican man. she made the food in the kitchen (food that was ridiculously spicy) and in between fixing his truck in the back and watching the soccer game on his high definition flat screen tv, he brought us our food.

both loved ava. but especially the little old mexican man. everytime he walked by he stroked her hair and said, as ryan put it, "grandfatherly things". in between bites of rice (the only mild flavored food on the table) ava told them to "stop it" and "don't touch my hair". when the little old mexican man became really distracted by the game (a violent sport, i observed) and forgot to touch ava and to call her a "little doll" she went and stood beside him until he did so. then, secure once again, ava told him to "stop it" and went back and sat down.

There are Commandments! We follow all ten, and I am commanding you to stop!

this may be old news to the rest of you, but i just learned that my favorite tv show, pushing daisies, was canceled. in october. i have no idea how i missed that.

WHAT?

i may never watch abc again ("hooray!" says ryan).

in all seriousness, i wonder why they canceled something so well loved? and why are people wasting their time watching lost and its wandering plots when you can see something like this:

my poor heart can barely take it.

on an upside (the ONLY upside), what size is chuck and what are they going to do with her wardrobe i wonder?

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