It cost me $90 to print all my pictures (600 plus) from March through December of ’08. Yikes.

Ellen: Standing, reaching for surfaces and hands to step to, imitating “shh” noise with finger to mouth, pointing, clapping, concentrating on opening and closing things for long periods of time, seems focused, determined, squirmy – doesn’t snuggle for longer than 3 seconds, but routinely lays her head against legs, arms, shoulders; pats her leg to music; starting to sign “all done” fairly well; screeches when frustrated; legs and stomach are getting even stronger than before; hair is there, but very short; big blue eyes; beautiful dimples; two top front teeth are in but spaced far enough apart that she looks like she’s missing one; and the best thing of all – she kisses me!!! Open mouth.

Will: Said “on purpose” the other night, and is using “actually” again a lot. Solid counting to ten now. Asking what words mean all the time. Loves laughing at the “How do dinosaurs…” books by Jane Yolen and Mark Teague. Great belly laugh and giggle. Skinny. Big eyes. Very straight teeth. Apparently a bit on the short end. Hair is straight towards the front, but big curls in back. Super into Barney. Seems popular with other kids, at least based on what parents’ share. Has hard time multi-tasking – requires lots of verbal reminding/redirecting/etc. Lots of concern about being dropped off at church or MOPS, but enjoys it once there. Defers/gives way to other kids in physical areas – play areas, etc. Doesn’t bump/jossle other kids. At times I have to remind him that he gets a turn, and help him make sure he takes it. Talks about spelling and counting a lot – uses them interchangeably. Has been challenging lately with defiance and not cooperating.

After several months of nearly nonexistent frustration with Will, I started having a hard time with him this weekend. Steve was in La Crosse working on getting the house there ready for the market again, and although its definitely easier to take care of the kids alone when they are both sleeping through the night, it was still lots of work to keep them both relatively happy. Patience is at a premium for me. If I were a full time SAHM I would have to have notes to myself up all over the house with this like “be proactive” and “be calm” written on them. I’m not joking, I actually would do that. I would have a list of activities posted on the fridge so I wouldn’t have to think of things on the fly, and could refer to the list. Steve is amazing, I tell ya. While I might wish he would do a few things a bit differently, he maintains harmony and calm and laughter throughout most of the day with the kids. He is observant about them, is proactive in managing their time, activities, behavior, sleep, moods. He keeps our house clean while doing this, does our shopping and ½ of our laundry. And is generally pleasant to me after a long day. No mean feat, in my opinion.

I think this will go down as our most intense parenting year: both kids are still at home full time and in diapers and it’s a harsh winter (ie very little outdoors time). This coming fall, Will will be in preschool, so there will be some down time for Steve, even if Will drops his naps, and new experiences for Will. Now Steve’s down time is limited to if the kids nap at the same time, rarely more than 1 hour if/when it happens. We are lucky, though, that Will still naps. I know tons of 3 year olds that don’t.

And not to discourage parents of 1 child, but 2 (at least at this age, which is all I can speak to) is more than twice the work. It may be fun work a lot of the time, and you’d never trade it if given the choice, but it is just plain old more work. There’s less wiggle room for recouping energy. I totally see what the majority of us stop at 2 rug rats.

I remember thinking dismissively before I had kids, “Well, don’t they nap? You could get stuff done then.” The negative karma that has yet to return to me for that thought is SCAAAAAREEEEEE.

I’ve been maintaining for 4 weeks now. Granted, the first two weeks were inadvertent, but we’ll call it maintaining. I think it is going okay. I’m not tracking as well as I should on weekends. I’ve been using the assumption that if I’m tracking and staying in range during the week, the weekends are less of an issue. So far that’s holding true. I’m anxious to look back on January to see what the numbers say, but so far, it looks like this: averaging 1600 cals/day. We’ll see if that holds through the rest of the month.
I’m bummed for Obama that he stumbled during the oath, but can’t imagine how hard it would be to say it correctly myself. I loved the speech.

And dear god I hope that family is safe. It makes me hurt to think of the crazies out there.