Spoon Full of Sugar

Petra is my last baby. I don't plan on having any more and it makes everything she does somehow a little more special and I'm trying my best to implant all of her sweetness in my memory forever. With Beckett, I was frantic to calm him, feed him, change him, figure out how to satisfy him and I feel like I missed so much of his baby-ness. Being back at work has made this effort a little tougher, so I'm left with bed and bath time during the week and weekends are golden. I'm sure this story sounds familiar to many. But not to my mom or my mother-in-law. If you think of the past generation of moms that stayed home until their kids were in Kindergarten and didn't have texting and cell phones as distractions, those moms really knew their kids. I want to make a better effort to be present when I'm with my kids, put the cell phone away at the playground and play more. Pretty soon I'll be packing away all of these baby spoons and sippy cups and I hope I feel full enough of baby sweetness.

My Family

Last Thanksgiving we held a costume party. A week prior to that day, we each received a character to come dressed as and were told to keep it secret until we came downstairs to breakfast that Thanksgiving morning. It was so much fun and everyone took it very seriously. We came with our outfits secretly packed in our suitcases all the way to Martha's Vineyard. Strange thing was, as we each came downstairs to reveal our character, none of the kids said a peep. It was breakfast as usual for them as the adults paraded around as these characters. Quite surreal as we stuffed the turkey and prepared for the day as a biker chick, a burned-out hippie, and chainsaw massacre dude. Can't wait for Christmas!

Good Bye Summer- For Real

Packed up all the summer stuff: picnic blanket, beach towels, cooler, swim trunks and sea shells we had scattered on the table. All that stuff wasn't scattered on the table, just the shells. You know me better than that! I took a snapshot of the shells for one last image of our beach days. Busted out the Halloween decorations the other day and it is finally beginning to feel like fall. Fall is my favorite season.  In the movie You've Got Mail, either Meg Ryan or Tom Hanks says something about a bouquet of pencils reminds them of fall...something like that and I totally agree. Back to school feels like a fresh start and I really needed that this year. New personal goals and new challenges mixed in with old friends. We're going apple picking next weekend with old friends and I can't wait. I may buy a pumpkin pie on site and eat it on the hay ride just to engulf the full sense of fall all at once since I don't have a bouquet of pencils near by.