sun please

Every winter I would always say I wouldn't be living here by the next one. Ugh! Winter in Ohio is crap-city. It's cold lots of places. It snows lots of places. But it is downright dreary here. We don't see the sun for months on end!

We've had three heavy snowstorms in a span of a week and a half, so we're pretty well buried. The first day it's pretty. Oh look! It's snowing! Oh, it's so clean and sparkly. Look how fast it's coming down!

Then in a couple hours it's black and nasty from the roads. It's piled up everywhere and the piles are taller than most children. It's all over your car, it's staining your pantlegs, and it's buried in your carpet.

I'm tired of muck, tired of coats, tired of hats and scarves and gloves. Tired of being stuck in the house all the time. Tired of needing every lamp in the house to not feel like we're trapped in a dungeon. We need some sun.

The other day we were in the car and Noah said he wanted all the snow to melt, but he didn't want to have a flood. I asked why he wanted the snow to melt, and he said he was ready for it to get warm.

So we listed off all the reasons life is much more fun when it's warm:

We can see the grass.

We can get ice cream.

We can go to the park.

We can play ball.

We can wear shorts.

We can wear t-shirts.

We can go for walks.

We can wear sandals.

We can have a picnic (me).

We can eat outside (Noah. Ha!).

No shirts! (That was all Noah.)

We can ride bikes.

We can see the sun.

Flowers will grow.

We can let the dog outside (neither of Noah's households owns a dog, but okay).

It's only February. It's 18 degrees. The 10-day forecast has nothing over 30. We won't be having picnics or letting the proverbial dog outside for awhile yet. But my long-lost friend The Sun came out this morning!

a little valentining

We had a nice Valentiney Sunday. Josh brought me some beautiful roses, and Eli was cute. His cuteness is one of my favorite gifts.

Noah and I made valentines and some pretty heart cookies to celebrate. We went to church, took naps, ate lunch and dinner and cookies and whoopie pies. And went to bed with stomachaches...

Today I had a cookie for breakfast and after lunch I had some chocolate hearts I got on the V-Day clearance rack at Target. And I'd go for a run, but we're in the process of getting 6-9 more inches of snow.

family portraits

We had some pictures taken yesterday. Eli wasn't especially cooperative, but Noah was surprisingly good.

In other news, Eli and I have colds. Darn it! Poor kid has had so many colds already in his few months of life, and I seem to always catch them from him, too... woe is we!

fall at home

I was hanging out with the boys the other day and really wanted to take them to a pumpkin patch, but to my surprise, I found out they aren't open on weekdays. So we went to the Walmart "patch" (i.e., giant box of dirty pumpkins) and "picked" a couple.

Noah had fun painting his, but Eli just wanted to eat both the paint and the pumpkin stem, so I had to help him a little with his. The design was totally his idea, though.

After I (finally) got Eli to take a nap, Noah and I ate some pumpkin-face quesadillas and dipped some pretzels in chocolate to make them pretty and yummy.

After Eli woke up, I tried really hard to get a photo together with both of them looking and smiling, but I'm thinking that might not happen until they're in their teens.

(not) sleepy time

I dressed the boys in matching PJs for the first time tonight. Noah had these already and I found them in Eli's size at a consignment store so I had to get them.

Even though they're dressed for bed, they're not actually ready for bed. Why? Well, because they both slept an insane amount of time today. Josh put Noah down for his nap at 1pm. At 4:15 he put Eli down for a nap, and Noah was still sleeping. At 7:15, they were both still asleep! And Eli took a 3.5-hour nap earlier in the day, too. So I had to wake them both, and needless to say, no one here is ready for bed but us parents. Eli will be ready soon, but it almost seems like torture to make Noah go back to bed any time soon when he just took a six-hour nap.

What should we do with our evening? I guess we won't be catching up on our marathon of old episodes of Oz. Nothing like a little prison love for the innocent eyes of a child.

Easter 2009

Eli wasn't too impressed with Easter. He looked cute, though. :)

Here's what he did while we colored eggs. You can see that I included him by getting some green dye on his little old-man pants. It came out!

After I took this picture and Eli had punched Noah in the mouth, Noah ran to Josh and said, "Eli put his germs on me!" That made me laugh, but he was being serious. I guess I'm telling him about getting his germs on the baby a little too often.

Another quote from Noah: "I'm holding Eli!" Of course Eli didn't seem to care.

This seemed like a great idea at the time, but he sure was mad. I like it anyway!

Much love from me and my jelly bean (courtesy of Patty!). Hope everyone had a blessed Easter. And lots of candy, too.

31w6d - on stepparenting

With the combination of my hormones, general exhaustion (laziness?), and short temper and Noah's terrible twos not quite done yet, I have felt like stepparenting has been trying a lot lately. He is young but he's already started snarking at me (things like, "no, daddy will do it" or "this is for Mommy," aka "not you"), telling me no, and last night he even told his dad that I hit him (I have never done such a thing!). And since I'm tired, cranky, and sick, I have little patience to pet his little head and let things go these days. I'm trying to work harder at it, though.

Anyway, in spite of all of that, he has really come around with this Eli business in the last month or so. At first he would answer our questions if we asked (What's the baby's name? Where is he? and so on) but now he's talking about him a lot. He helped Josh build the crib awhile back and it seems like that made a big difference. We all sat in the boys' room the other night and played and Noah was trying to show us that Eli's clothes are, in fact, too small for him. He had this orange onesie on his head and the arms were sticking out like tiger ears. I wish I had taken a picture, but the waddle to my camera would have taken longer than the moment would have lasted.

Now he's started telling us how he's going to teach Eli to do this or that, and his latest thing is he wants to give him a kiss all the time. It's so cute when he kisses my belly and then announces proudly what he did ("I gave Wee-wi a kiss!").

To come full-circle, the other night when we asked who ripped a page out of one of his books, he stated firmly: "Wee-wi did." Kids!

30 weeks

30 weeks today! I like to think of it as the beginning of the downhill slope. 

I had an OB appointment this week and Eli is measuring about a week and a half ahead. I asked the doctor if she could guess how big he might be and she said she couldn't, but she sure didn't think he'd be small. Mom says all her kids were big, and Josh was a 9-pounder. And apparently Noah was over 7 pounds even a month early. I think I'm in for a big Little Dude. 

Here's a 30-week picture. 

25w3d

The crib finally came! That was exciting. Josh brought it home and he and Noah put it together. Noah kept talking about Eli's crib. For some reason, he can't seem to pronounce it. It comes out something like "woe-why" but we're just glad to know he seems to be listening and much more aware of what's going on than we thought. He knows there's a baby in my belly, that his name is Eli, and that he's his brother. Whether he has any idea what "brother" means, who could say. He still thinks Eli is a girl sometimes... he must know a girl baby and think all babies are girls.

Anyway, here's a picture of the crib. With all the painting and stuff all over, the rest of the room isn't really fit for photos at the moment. I'll get to it.