Wednesday, July 15, 2009

What Cute Little Children I Have

The Pumpkin has been handling the transition to having a baby in the family really well. At least, so far. There are times it is obvious that she is a bit jealous of the attention he gets and that she is upset because he is crying. But in general, she seems really intrigued by the baby.

She loves to look at him and hold him. In fact, she wants to hold him pretty often, while he's nursing or sleeping or getting his diaper changed or even at times when we actually let her hold him (with us assisting her). She sings Twinkle and Rockabye Baby to him.

Just about every time she sees him, she exclaims (loudly, and sometimes right in his face), "Oh, look at the baby!" or "What a cute little baby you have!"

And we do. We have two cute little babies. The Pookie is adorable--an eating, pooping, crying, sleeping bundle of adorableness. The Pumpkin is her usual vibrant, lively, interested, funny blur of beauty.

We are blessed.

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Question of the Week - How to Celebrate a Birthday

As I noted last year, July 14th is my favorite day of the year. Because...

It's my birthday!

I love birthdays. It's your own special day, the one day of the year that is all about you! Even when you share it with someone else, you don't share it with many people. It's not like Christmas or some other holiday in which so much of the world shares. It's a special day for you and just a few others. It's the one day of the year on which you know all your friends and family (who remember) will think of you. People call, email, text and post special messages with happy wishes.

Normally, I would take the day off work (I do have that!) and spend the day doing whatever struck my fancy. I would usually top it off with dinner out with my husband at a nice French restaurant (today is also Bastille Day, so I love to celebrate at a French restaurant). But this year, I am a bit restricted in what I can do for my birthday. It's a weekday, so most people (including Londo, who is back to work this week) are at work. The Pookie is one month old today, and with the on demand nursing and without having started pumping yet, I can't go far from him for long.

But for this week's question of the week, I'm wondering:

How do you like to/plan to celebrate your birthday?

For this year, I won't celebrate how I used to, and that's okay. My MIL is staying with us this week, and she made me blueberry pancakes for breakfast. My daughter sang me "Happy Birthday" numerous times this morning. I don't have to go to work, and my MIL currently has my son (Londo is back to work this week) so I can have a break and get a shower and whatever I want. I'm thinking of ordering some Indian food (I LOVE Indian food!) and picking it up for lunch. Londo got me a gift certificate to Amazon, so I'm going spend a lot of the day shopping online for books! And this afternoon, I'm finally going to at least start watching the A&E/BBC version of Pride and Prejudice, which I've had on DVD for a long time but haven't watched yet. (It's long, so I probably won't finish until tomorrow or the next day.)

These are good plans, and I'm really happy that I'm not celebrating in my normal fashion. Because it means that I have my two wonderful children this year, and they are totally worth giving up fancy French restaurants for a few years. :-)

How about you all? Do you like big parties? Small get togethers? Quiet dinners out? Ignoring your special day all together? How do you celebrate your birthday?

Monday, July 13, 2009

DC Area Meet Up in August

My DC area friends, how about we meet up in August? I'm thinking the first or second weekend, which would be August 1st, 2nd, 8th or 9th. I was thinking we could meet up in Rockville Maryland's Cabin John Regional Park Just off of I-270. It's got a fantastic playground and great picnic area, which are completely shaded by trees. It also has... a miniture train to ride!

I'm thinking as long as we meet early and stay in the abundant shade, we should be okay. What do you guys think?

Learning I Have Hypertension

This past winter, I discovered I have developed high blood pressure. This came as a surprise for me, since I generally had always had blood ...