Six weeks ago, we went on a camping trip where I re-sprained the ankle I injured in the spring. I wasn’t doing anything exciting, just taking a step down on a hike. It caught me off guard. There I lay on the ground writhing in pain with my family, equally surprised, staring at me. The injury sent me down a 4-6 week path of limited exercise. I spent two weeks in a boot and two weeks in an intense brace….
This year, the first day of school was completely bananas. There was such an overload of emotions that I was pretty much numb. (And for most of the day Noel literally was numb.) But, let’s back up a minute. The Tuesday before school started, Noel had an appointment with the Orthopedic Surgeon. We knew there was a strong possibility that his arm would need to be reset since the bones didn’t look like they matched up in the x-rays from…
Yesterday, Noel and I ended a date in the ER. You could say it had been “one of those days.” There’s that saying that bad things come in threes and if I count only the major offenses of yesterday, that seems fairly accurate to me. The day started out innocuous enough. We slept in and were lazily making breakfast. (Oh, summer, we will miss this part of you!) One of the kids wanted to let the cat out and I…
Back when I was roughly Ellen’s age, I decided it was time to leave my mark on the world in a very literal way. My mother had previously been an Avon representative and had a good supply of nail polish. When she was occupied (I think gardening) a friend and I got into her stash and proceeded to paint everything – our bodies, my toys and books, the kitchen table – EVERYTHING. I don’t have any photographic evidence of my…
Ellen has been looking forward to her birthday since Christmas. (Admittedly, I felt very much the same way four years ago about her birth day, but with a lot more hormonal angst.) For months she would frequently tell us, “My birthday’s next!” This year, her birthday fell on a Monday which is a pretty busy (and very Cooper-centric) day for us and I was really worried about how to make the day feel special. The Saturday before her birthday we took…
Potty training ranks pretty high up on my worst things about being a parent list. Potty training Cooper was a long process that had it’s own set of challenges and by the time we finally got things acceptably under control I was completely and utterly exhausted on the potty training front. Everyone told me girls are so much easier to potty train and several of my friends have little girls that are potty training prodigies so I was really, really hopeful….
It was bound to happen eventually. Cutting another child’s hair (or your own) seems to be a kid rite of passage. I blame the preschool for having that beauty salon center that Cooper took such an interest in. The real shocker here though, is that she let him do it. When I passed through the kitchen with the laundry basket and saw Cooper combing Ellen’s hair, I stopped in my tracks. Combing Ellen’s hair is always a decision I weigh…
This was the first birthday that Ellen anticipated. For weeks she’s been telling us that “Ellen’s birthday is next.” When it comes to planning anything for my kids, I always turn to Pinterest and not in the way you would expect. Pinterest is a great way to visually display options which is perfect for kids who are young or struggle with verbal communication. This year, Ellen chose a Chocolate Covered Strawberry cake (check out the review on our food blog)…
For some reason, I’ve always dreamed of having a spunky, redheaded girl. (Or a mini me 😉 ) At three, Ellen may not be delivering fully on the redhead bit (she’s seeming solidly strawberry blonde at the moment), but she definitely makes up for it in spunk. She runs head first at life with a certain amount of reckless abandon that is sometimes scary. She’ll be in the middle of something and then sporadically decide to change course, literally throwing…
I cherish the few hours that Cooper is away at preschool every week; it’s nice for Ellen and I get to have one on one time with just us girls. One day the two of us were folding laundry (i.e. I was folding laundry and she was burying herself in it). Ellen stuck her head out from under a shirt and with a dimpled grin exclaimed with pure innocence, “I’m stupid!” I have no idea where she’d picked up that…