And she's off...

A dear friend of mine once described to me the first time she looked at her son. This was before I had children and she was (and still is) the wise Mama in my eyes. She took one look at him and thought, "Oh. Now my heart is walking around outside my body."

I've thought of that many times throughout the last five years. When you watch this little person figuring out how to interact with the world and you can't shield her from the slings and arrows, it's hard not to feel each little hurt and fear and frustration. Of course, that also comes with a heaping portion of unadulterated joy. 

Joy and puppy feet.

Today, I can say that I've felt both. My heart, my darling, my daughter Nora Lee went to kindergarten. 

This is the moment my heart left me. I hope it didn't sit in gum. 

I can say that she was ready. She has been lucky to have lots of great teachers and friends who have been priming her for this for the last year. She knew all about the bus and the backpack and lunch and recess. She skipped through the day with ease, even with a couple of bumps in the road. I, on the other hand, cried all the way to Target. 

At least I still have my baby, right? My snuggly little bundle of good-smelling love?

This little stinker

Whoa. Wait a second. That....looks remarkably like a toddler. 24 pounds, 28 inches tall, a year old. She talks and signs and walks if you hold her hand. She has opinions and the vocal cords to prove it. She has eight teeth and more on the way. She likes to smash crackers into her soup (cancel the paternity test). She took a purple corduroy pony and a book to bed tonight. She chose today to quit nursing.

You know what? It's too much. If anyone needs me, I'll be in the basement working on my patent for growth stunting potion.

A Cold Day in...

Hey, look who's gorgeous. That's right. Beautiful baby up in here. 

Now that I've got your attention, I'd like to say something serious. 

Orthopedic surgeons? They rock. Like totally make my whole day. And this is coming from the wife of someone who is perpetually bitter about the fact that everyone who takes one look at him thinks that he's an orthopod. You know, because all large, athletic doctors go into orthopedics. 

Those of you who have known me a while may remember that three years ago, I was in a wheelchair. Pelvis surgically broken in three places and all that jazz. After years of problems, I finally, definitively got my hip fixed. And that was good, but the recovery was so slow that I often questioned whether I would ever not feel like an old lady. 

Well, this was me yesterday. 

Not my most flattering photo

That's a 5K! Me! And while the weather made it appear that hell had frozen over, I made some calls and apparently, it was only Duluth. My goal was to run the whole way without stopping or walking. And I did. That felt pretty good. *

How did this happen? You might well ask, hypothetical reader. The true story is that it was slow and pain-staking and completely accidental. 

It all began when I destroyed our elliptical, which the surgeons had told me I wasn't even supposed to be using. I was trying really hard to work out post-beautiful-baby and was still somewhat...ahem...emotional and completely lost my tenuous grip on perspective when a chunk of exercise equipment went ricocheting off during my workout. Since my husband, like many men, fears his wife's eyes might gain super-horrible-powers if allowed to leak, resulted in Eric buying a treadmill for us. 

I was happily walking on the treadmill pretty much every day when a particularly excellent song came on (Josh Ritter "To The Dogs or Whoever") and it inspired me to run. For a solid three minutes. I laughed about it and went back to walking. 

Then, the next day, I ran three minutes. Twice. After a winter on the treadmill in the basement, I hit the road. 

Sure. I might grind down that hip faster this way. I might end up back in that wheelchair sooner than I anticipated. But in the meantime, I'm running. Every day, I'm stronger and faster and less painful.

And I think that rocks.

I cheered Mommy on! And got hot cocoa! Not necessarily in that order!

* For anyone who wants to know the gory details, my time was 31:37 (10:11 minutes/mile). I'm not blowing anyone's doors off, but I figured I'd save that for next time.

We're here!

Jeez. I've been derelict. I swear that it's not for lack of love for these little munchkins. It's more the desire to spend my time with them when I have it. And otherwise, spending it on illnesses, dead chickens, work stress and taxes.

I'll be back, someday. I swear I will.

In the meantime, allow me to document the current state of my children.

Nora, age 5, in Key West (looking older every day):

Ellie, age 7 months, in her laundry basket (looking sillier every day):

Happy birthday, Nora

Nora has had a big week. Her 5 year old well child check was on Wednesday, with all the pre-kindergarten shots. She took them like a champ and tipped the scales with a fighting weight of 42 pounds at 43 inches. One clean bill of health later and she was on her way with three bandaids, two suckers and a handful of stickers.

Friday, her actual birthday, was celebrated with a date with Daddy to the hibachi restaurant in town (her choice) where she sampled swordfish for the first time (also her choice). By all accounts, a good time was had by all. I wouldn't know. Not wanting to be a third wheel, I stayed home and had leftovers and snuggled the heck out of a baby. This guy ain't complaining.

Here are the buddies right before they left.

And here is my little girl, looking more grown up than I'm really comfortable with.

She also opened presents from us and relatives near and far. Doll house furniture, books, games and art supplies have kept her occupied all weekend. She was overwhelmed with the awesomeness of it all!

On Sunday, her friends joined her at the Duluth Children's Museum for a super hero themed party. They made masks, ate pizza, cake and ice cream and chased each other around and around and around...Every one of them looked like they were going to need to be poured into bed that night. Glad to do my part.

This picture serves to reassure me that she still is my little girl....

Super Ellie

And is you've been wondering what the baby looks like these days....

Super Nora

Just hypothetically, if your child were still wearing her Halloween costume in January, would you gently encourage her to move on to another interest? Or would you take a bunch of pictures?

Hypothetically, of course.

Holiday Haze

Once again, the holidays have come and gone in a blur. It goes faster every year- and these years with little ones especially. I find myself too exhausted from the early Santa mornings and the late baby nights to write too much these days. Add in the fact that I'm back to work full time and the candle-space between the flames is getting ever shorter. Therefore, in lieu of smart words, I give you sweet photos.

It's all over now.

For posterity, I want to record this conversation from dinner tonight.

Eric: We have a problem. I can'y find K-A-T-I-E-A-N-D-T-H-E-B-I-G-S-N-O-W.

Nora: Yeah, I don't know where it is either.

Me: Don't know where what is, Nora?

Nora: Ummmm...one of my books.

Me: Which one?

Nora: Ummmmmm....Katie and the Big Snow.

Me and Eric (in unison): Shit.

Nora: [hysterical laughter]

Happy Thanksgiving!

This may be my favorite piece of art in my house. I love the anatomically correct waddle juxtaposed with the free-form placement of feathers. I think she might have disregarded the assignment and tried to make a chicken.

That's my girl.

Snowy Saturday

There are sometimes benefits to being stuck inside on the weekend. Today, I used my evil mommy superpowers to get both girls to (briefly) hold still.

Heh heh heh. I feed off the cuteness.

The Story of the Hat

I would like to tell you about my journey. It is a story filled with pathos. With drama. With fleece.

As you may know, I live in Duluth. Duluth, historically, is cold. Surprisingly, this does not stop people from procreating. Thus, I also have children. I would like to reiterate these points for any retailers in the audience.

1. I live in Duluth.

2. Duluth is cold.

3. I have children.

I feel that it is important to highlight this issue, as said retailers apparently have one shipping schedule for the entire continental United States. For outerwear. For babies. I personally feel this is wrong, wrong, wrong-in so many ways- Wrong.

I believe that my child, while admittedly furry, is not entirely capable of regulating her body temperature and may not enjoy being taken outside in a sleeveless onesie. If we were in Houston, maybe. (Please, refer back to Item #1.)

Thus, when I tragically lost the hand-me-down green fleece hat that had served us so well for Thing One and again for Thing Two in August to September (Item #2), I found myself in the market for another one. You can probably guess the next chapter.

There were no fleece baby hats. Anywhere.

Now, I am nothing if not resourceful and obstinate. I refuse to wrap my child's delicate, squishy head in a diaper. (Again.) Therefore, I made my way to the fabric store where I found a sale on fleece remnants. After much digging in pattern books, I had found a pattern for a cloth owl, many pages of dog coats and one, lonely pattern for infant fleece hats.

Sold! I snatched up that pattern, waved goodbye to the crafty owl and took my kid home. As Ellie had already outgrown a number of her hats, I figured that she would have outgrown the Extra-Small size and I proceeded to cut out and sew a size Small. Girl's got kind of a big head is what I'm saying. (It's like Sputnik- round but quite pointy in parts.)

So I made this wild hat, because if you can't wear insane combinations of colors and prints when you're a baby, when can you?

OK, so it was a little big. It'll keep her head warm, right? I grabbed her and took her to Nora's swim lesson. When I got there, I discovered that the hat had devoured my baby's head and was working its way down her chest. She was delighted by this, but I felt like maybe a whole-head fleece helmet was less than ideal.

When I showed the hat to Nora, though, she wanted one in the worst way, which gave me an idea.

As you can tell by her pajama/zebra hat combination, Nora has her own sense of style. This hat fits snuggly into her aesthetic. So, problem solved. The hat wasn't a waste of time. Hooray!

But, wait. My baby still didn't have a warm noggin. And Nora thought that it would be super-neat if she and her sister had matching hats for Ellie's first day of daycare. But it turned out that infant hat pattern only goes down to 18.5 inches head circumference. For reference, my (totally-not-a-pin)head is 21 inches.

Probably belatedly, I measured Ellie's head. It was 16.5 inches. In other words, not Sputnik. Not an orange on a toothpick. Not a gargantuan cranium. Yes, I was wrong. And patternless.

So, now I had a baby with a normal-sized, cold head, a pre-schooler who desperately wanted to demonstrate her sisterly bond and a pile of fleece. At this point, I was thinking about wrapping the fleece around Ellie's head, diaper-style. (Again.) Only Nora's enthusiasm prevented that end to this story.

So, I made up a pattern. I made it match as much as I could to the one Nora was wearing. It turned out well enough to keep one baby head warm. And now, she's wearing it inside, because she gets crabby if you take it off.

Someday, these pictures are going to come back and bite me. I'm picturing two sets of zebra-hat-related therapy bills. Whatevs. It's totally worth it.

Big (Brother) Weekend

It was such an eventful weekend, I have to post twice. In addition to the cuteness, we had some pretty sweet awesomeness n the form of Uncle Jim. He flew out from Cazenovia, NY to visit us girls while Eric hunted.

We pizzaed, beered, aquariumed and generally had a pretty kickin' time. I feel like I have to mention that, because all the pictures are from my couch. Cute pictures, though.

Two-Leg!

Eric believes that Ellie is even more driven than most babies to get upright. She does seem to be focused intensely on pushing up, skipping right past all that rolling over and sitting nonsense.

Which is cute, until she has been bobbling around flail-tastically in your lap for an hour and your arms are ready to fall clean out of their sockets.

To assist Miss Evelyn in her push to become a two-leg, we pulled out the exersaucer this weekend. I admit, it is ridiculously early (11 weeks, really?). But just check out the sheer joy in this face:

And of course, the inevitable "help" from the big sister:

Look how reverentially Ellie checks out Nora's incredible motor skills. She can hold up her own head! And thwack! And stop thwacking! Amazing!

And the best part? All that exercise led to a big one of these:

P.S.- For those of you scratching your heads here, Ellie is actually tall enough to touch the base of the exersaucer. And to bounce herself up and down. I think Nora got that tall at approximately 5 months. You will notice some extra padding to keep her from flopping around too much, though.

Nora's Two Loves

Nora has decided that there are two things that she loves more than anything. One is her little sister.

Ellie is starting to interact much more, with gummy grins and silly looks. She also is starting to get upset if she's left alone, but she calms right down when Nora comes over to talk and sing to her, which Nora is always happy to do. She has an uncanny sense of what Ellie needs and she truly wants to make her sister happy. It's pretty sweet.

The other thing Nora loves? This guy:

That is Cotton, the Silkie bantam hen that we adopted. Unfortunately, she and the other bantam, Valerie, have had some trouble integrating into the flock. Like, I keep having to pull Valerie out of holes she has dug herself into to get away from the big chickens. So, we starting putting them in the basement in the brooder to give them some time away.

Last night, Nora insisted on crawling into the brooder with them (Thanks for making it strong, Eric!). She was feeding them little pieces of bagel while we talked about her day at school. Then came the best moment of the night.

Nora: I love you.

Me: I love you, too, kiddo.

Nora: I was talking to the chicken, Mommy.

Yeah, you thought I was kidding about that whole "two things Nora loves" thing, didn't you?

Let's end with the more endearing snuggle.

What's that I see, Mom?

It's not shots, is it?

Unfortunately, yes. Yes, it is. Ellie got her first set of baby shots this morning. It turns out that'll piss off a baby.

We also got to hear that Miss Evelyn is growing nicely. She is 12 pounds, 15 ounces and 23.5 inches long. That's in the 90th percentile for both height and weight (which makes her 50th percentile for height to weight ratio). That translates into her being a perfectly normal 3 and 1/2 month old. Except that she's only 2 months. She's also ahead on her milestones, especially gross motor skills. All of this has been referred to by our friends as "Lauering up." It's like she was restricted by my mere human womb and now has to explode out of it to achieve her true size and potential.

You go for it, kid. I'll try to keep up.

Some cuties I know

We got some good family time over the weekend, down in the Twin Cities. And I got to take some pictures of some cousin cuteness.

Mary and Larry Lauer, surrounded by their grandkids.

Clockwise from top: Sara, Isabella, Nora Lee and Katelyn (holding Ellie)

Kate's father wants it to be known that that is not her baby.

Bella and Nora Lee trying to not look cute at a pumpkin patch.

They are not succeeding.

Family Picture Time!

Hey, want to see what we look like?

No? Too bad. Here it is.

In other news, today is the last day of my full time maternity leave. I can't believe that 8 weeks are over already. I started the day by snuggling my baby until I had to leave the bed to palliate my caffeine withdrawal. Then, I paid lots of bills, paid off some credit cards and slogged through finances. Then, I ate the last potatoes from the garden for lunch. Is the phrase "win/fail" a thing? Can I coin it? There have been few days in my life as bittersweet as this one.

Nice to Meet You...Um, Do You Shake Hands?

Nora woke me up at 7:00 today, fully dressed and raring to go. This left us with two hours before she needed to be at preschool, so we have been playing. First, we learned about mail. I have been writing thank you notes for baby gifts, so she helped me put on return address labels and stamps and to lick envelopes. This lead inevitably to her wanting to write a letter of her own. I swear, I encouraged her to write to someone far away. I did. Instead, she chose to draw an elaborate picture of our neighbors with a chipmunk, peanuts and polka dots. And to mail it to them.

She's tickled and is now planning her future correspondence.

Then, we watered plants. Nora was asking the names of the plants and I told her that this is a jade plant:

Now, we know a young lady named Jade. Which goes quite a long way to explaining how these next two plants ended up named.

I would like to introduce you to....

Cindy the aloe

Aaaaaand Carl the Rubber tree.

This is why we have kids.

Pop Quiz

What happens when you take a fussy baby into the bathtub at 2AM?

Well, joy and hilarity ensue. But also, Hipster Hair!

That's right. My baby's stylin'. It's like me and Angelina Jolie are on a total wavelength or....oh my god, I need to get some sleep.

More random favorite moments to share

I like the ernest, confidential look of this one. You just get the feeling that Eric is imparting some crucial fatherly wisdom to his daughter. Or they're talking about pooping. Either way.

My little hippy spawn demonstrates how to snuggle your baby in a kangaroo carry in a sling. And comes frighteningly close to getting it right.

And for your daily dose of awwwww....