Our neighbor is the groundskeeper for a
couple that owns a beautiful house on a river nearby. A few
days ago we got invited up to play for the afternoon. It was
fun, and a little bit of country. She made a little grove of
trees and prunes them (or whatever) so they are great climbing
trees. The boys loved it! Eve wanted to climb too, but settled
for eating a freshly picked apple from a nearby apple
tree.

Eve checked out their
cool “chair” rock and they all took a “canoe ride” to find
buried pirates treasure. Parrish did the paddling and, I’ll
admit, Lex was confused. :)

Eve just held tight to that apple
and all was good. We had a really fun time. We have nice
neighbors :)

A funny little aside…
when I was getting the kids ready to go I asked Lex if he
wanted to play with Parrish. He said yes and Eve got very
happy. We got hats and shoes and went into the garage. When I
tried to put Eve in the car she threw a little fit and said
“Parrish! Parrish!” over and over. I put her down for a minute
and she ran to the door of the garage, calling Parrish’s name
and trying to get out. I think she was really confused that we
were getting in the car to visit Parrish :) It’s cute that she
can say his name and she was very happy when we got out of the
car and Parrish was there.

I have a silly Facebook application called
Pokey installed (giant waste of time, says Alan ;) ) and the
application is a little virtual dog you can play with. It’s
silly, but Eve LOVES it. Any time someone is sitting at the
computer she wants up and points to the computer saying
“doggie, doggie,” almost relentlessly. She’s so funny. For
awhile now we’ve been saying we should try and get a video of
her, so today I gave it a shot. This isn’t her funniest stuff,
but still cute. (Please ignore my crazier than usual hair!)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouvC_wkhUgM]

Normally when we’re done Eve will do a really
good “nap” sign and say “doggie nap.” Then Max will yawn and
lay down to sleep. (a minute or so after you stop playing with
him) Today, however, she did not want to stop and did not want
doggie to nap. :)

Here are a few
pictures of Max. He’s really a very good doggie.

One final note… Eve cut another tooth
recently, bringing the total up to 9! This one is her first
back tooth though! Soon she’ll really be able to chow down
:)

We had our first day of gymnastics today.
Everyone had fun. We started as one big crowd (Baby Bears and
3yr olds) for a few minutes of “warm up” then split into two
groups. Lex did not like the warm up and started crying, but
when we split up his teacher came over and asked him to join
her group and away he went. Like a big boy! I did the other
circuit with Eve and she loved it. I did have to catch her once
or twice as she tried to make a break for the giant trampoline,
but overall she did a great job of staying on track. The
teacher said that Lex did a great job and just needs to work on
staying in line and taking turns. I noticed a few times when
she introduced a new activity he got so excited he jumped right
to the head of the line to go first. I guess if that’s the only
problem then we’re doing ok :) (sorry about the picture quality.
my camera had trouble taking a picture indoors at such a
distance)

As we were
waiting for class to start, a little boy (20mo) was playing
with Eve and trying to rub her head. His mom kept telling him
to keep his hands to himself, until I told her it was ok and
that Eve’s head is like a magnet for rubs… everyone feels the
urge to rub her head as they walk by :) This little boy rubbed
her head and then kissed her arm. She’s definitely attracting
them young. We went to a party this weekend (baby Lyndsey
turned 1yr!) and a little boy (maybe 2yr) was fussing about
something, but when he saw Eve he stopped, smiled, kissed her
head, then walked away. He came back a few minutes later and
kissed her head again. We’re going to have to keep a close eye
on her…

And speaking of Eve’s head, I
think we can officially say the hair is growing! I wouldn’t
call it long, flowing locks just yet (ok, not even long enough
to get a good picture) but it’s definitely starting to come in.
You can mess up her hair and yesterday she got sand in her
hair. Normally that’s not exactly an accomplishment, but we
took it as a good sign that she had enough hair to get sand in
it :)

That’s all for now. Gotta go clean
my house :( I had an AWESOME Pampered Chef party yesterday and
I have two more events tonight and tomorrow night (not shows,
but meetings and training). Busy, busy.

I’m about to post more information than
any sane woman would in a public place, but I’m excited, so
here goes…

I’m so happy with Weight
Watchers. They are supportive, smart (no funky, quirky,
skeptical “diet” miracles) and I’ve lost 22 lbs!!! I have
plenty more to go unfortunately, but that’s a huge start!! Eve
weighs 23lbs!

I won’t say the whole
thing has been easy, but it hasn’t really been that hard
either. I’m rarely hungry and can eat almost anything, in
moderation, of course. I was doing really well on the Core plan
for the first 9 weeks, then hit a plateau. I really missed
bread (yummy carbs!), which you can have on the Core plan, but
in very limited quantities. I also was having technical issues
and was unable to use their nifty e-tracking tools for
monitoring what I was eating. And we had company and blah,
blah, blah. After three weeks of little to no change, the WW
lady suggested I try the Flex plan. I was a bit intimidated at
having to write down everything I eat (who has time for
that?!?!) but I gave it a shot and lost 5lbs in the past two
weeks!!! They say when you plateau the best thing to try is
switching plans. The Flex plan is very easy and allows me to
eat more things (bread!) and tracking isn’t hard. I can even
have bad days (or entire weekends!) and still do ok overall. I
think I’ll be sticking with this plan until I plateau again,
then back to Core. Go me!

I only have
9lbs left until I’m back to my pre-pregnancy weight (3.5 years
later), which was my original goal when joining. Then, we’ll
see ;)

Thanks for reading :) I’m happy
today. We spent an hour and a half at the playground today. I
was hoping to wear the kids out before the WW meeting. I think
they were plenty wore out, but that didn’t do much towards
keeping them quiet. That’s not true actually, Lex did great at
the meeting, just Eve was a wild monkey. She’s quite a card
these days.

I had a brief moment of maternal guilt today
(see, all about me!). We were having fun at the playground, Lex
was chatting it up with the few kids there, then a crew of
preschoolers came to play. Lex was thrilled! He ran around with
them, talking to everyone. I’ve been very confident in our
decision not to put him in preschool, even though all of the
3yr olds we know are starting school this week, but seeing him
play with all the kids made me start doubting myself. Briefly.
I know we made the right decision, but I think he would love
preschool too. Next year! (In the picture he’s playing
hide-and-seek with this little girl who is very confused as to
why he’s counting at the same time she is. Some day he might
actuallly figure out the right way to play hide-and-seek :)
)