Lex is a big fan of blocks. We actually have
several sets, so there are blocks available in most every room.
Lately he’s starting to demonstrate skills in color patterning,
structural integrity and general architectural creativity — if
you can say all that about “towers” of bright color plastic
blocks. It’s neat to watch him him build. So far he’s
pretty good natured when the demolition squad (aka Eve) comes
calling too! Here are two building projects from the other day.
He was playing in the living room for awhile and when I came to
check on him I saw this first picture. I asked what he was
building and he said it was a wall for the cars to use. I was
impressed, and even more impressed with the little room for the
fish on the back of the wall. He had no real explanation for
that, it’s just the way it is. When all the blocks were used up
he jumped up, ran into the office, and started building a
“fence.” He had a good start before the demo team woke up and
went to work! He tried to build, she tried to wreck, and I took
pictures :) Someday I’ll get up the nerve to dig out Alan’s
enormous box of Legos. I’m not sure Lex is ready for the tiny
pieces yet, and I’m positive that Eve isn’t ready!, but when
the time is right Lex will have a pretty cool new toy to play
with. I think Alan will be pretty happy that day too
:)

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 :)
)

Eve is 17 months old today. Happy 17 months,
baby girl! She’s so funny lately! She has a great personality
and loves to laugh and be tickled. She also likes to do tae-bo
with me (more on that some day), roll around on the floor,
build towers, and play outside in the sandbox. Her vocabulary
is amazing and she’s starting to put together two word phrases,
such as “more cheese” and “daddy work” and “doggie nap.” She’s
just a bundle of fun lately, so silly and adorable.

Parenting is a funny thing and if you’re
not careful you can make yourself crazy with self-doubt and
seconding guessing — trust me, I’m an expert!

We went grocery shopping this afternoon (Lex
choose to sit in the cart the entire time “so I don’t get
lost,” but that’s another story) and we got home around 6:30pm.
Lex said he wanted to listen to music for awhile and have no
bath and no stories. Alan and I agreed to this, so we turned on
a CD for him and he settled down in the living room. I brought
him a little food and Eve joined him for dinner in the living
room with the music on. This was good for about 1/2 hr until
Lex started getting a little rambunctious and kicked Eve off
her chair. She fell right over and cried, and cried, and cried.
I think she was startled and tired more than actually hurt. Lex
got a “so sad” in the office and Alan put Eve to bed. A short
while later Lex threw a ball at the TV! Luckily it was a soft,
plastic ball and did no damage, but OMG that is not good
behavior!!! I promptly turned off his music and he went to bed.
He screamed and protested and Alan ended up putting him to bed
in his clothes and all. No bath, no stories, no clean teeth, no
new diaper, no pajamas… no pieces of the usual bedtime
routine. We then proceeded to deal with him for almost two
hours. He would cry and scream, then settle down and we’d think
he was sleeping, but then he’d start crying a long, sad wail
again, or he’d get up and ask to come down stairs. It was
awful. But the worst part is that while dealing with a child
you have lots of time to wonder if you’re doing the right thing
and if he’s really that hungry and second-guess how you should
have handled the situation. It’s like adding insult to injury,
not only are you listening to a screaming child but you’re also
questioning every move you made and wondering if you could have
handled the whole thing better. Or maybe it’s just me? Anyway,
around 9:15 Alan tried to lay down with him which often settles
him down, but this time Lex ended up crying so uncontrollably
that Alan brought him into our room. I decided to bring him
some milk and we ended up sitting on the bed reading stories.
After a cup of milk, a few stories, and new pajamas (he was
apparently unhappy with the ones Alan put on him earlier) Lex
told me his body was tired and need to rest. He climbed in bed,
I stayed with him for a few minutes as he recapped the
situation (“I turned my shirt around so the picture was down,
then I pulled it over my head! I was crying and crying and I
didn’t like the pants daddy picked. The milk you brought me
makes me feel a little bit better.”) and then he went right to
sleep.

As I analyzed the situation I
think the problem is that there was no rountine at all before
we put him in bed. It was his choice, but that doesn’t mean he
knew how to handle it. Sometimes we miss one part of the
routine and he does ok, but tonight with NO pieces of the
routine at all I think his little routine-centric psychy
couldn’t handle it. Sigh. Parenting can be hard! But now we
have two babies sleeping peacefully and life is ok again. (Poor
Eve had to sleep through two hours of ordeal. Imagine the
dreams she was having!)

I am so sad. I have officially admitted
defeat in my cloth diapering efforts and started the process of
selling off my stash. I feel lame to admit this, but I’m really
bummed about the whole thing. We’ve tried so many different
options and variations, but we just can’t keep their little
bums rash free… that is, until we put on the Huggies.
Recently I’ve been trying part-time cloth diapering, which
usually results in a day or two of cloth (on Eve only, Lex is
not that accommodating) then back in Huggies with diaper cream.
Then I have a half load of laundry that sits there until I
remember to do it. The whole thing is so sad. I guess the
saddest part, really, is that I don’t know why it’s bothering
me so much! Hopefully I can recoup some of the money we spent
on the cloth diapers (I’m sure I can, really) and maybe Lex
will potty-train soon anyway. We’ll see.

Joyce and I took the kids to a gymnastics
open house today and I signed them up! Lex did the “Baby Bears”
class when he was younger, but we stopped when Eve was born. It
was too exhausting for me trying to chase him around with Eve
crying in the belly pack. Today Lex did a wonderful job of
listening, waiting his turn, and following instructions. Eve
had a great time just running around and jumping. They both
loved the giant trampoline. Lex even remembered the place from
last year and was excited to be back. I have them in different
classes (16-24mo for her and 3yr olds for him) but I got the
one time block where the two classes run simultaneously. This
was critical because I have to participate with her (he’s now
old enough to do it alone) and I didn’t want to be making
multiple trips or trying to figure out what to do with him
while I was helping her. So on Monday’s we’ll all be on the gym
floor, me helping Eve and Lex listening to the teachers and
following instructions. It should be fun!