I’ll Try

Totally stole this from another blog! I love it though and I’m going to try and remember some of these! I wish I had done #9. I like #26. I need to work on #29 and #40 makes me laugh!

 

50 Life Lessons

1. Life isn’t fair, but it’s still good.

2. When in doubt, just take the next small step.

3. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone.

4. Don’t take yourself so seriously. No one else does.

5. Pay off your credit cards every month.

6. You don’t have to win every argument. Agree to disagree.

7. Cry with someone. It’s more healing than crying alone.

8. It’s OK to get angry with God. He can take it.

9. Save for retirement starting with your first paycheck.

10. When it comes to chocolate, resistance is futile.

11. Make peace with your past so it won’t screw up the present.

12. It’s OK to let your children see you cry.

13. Don’t compare your life to others’. You have no idea what their journey is all about.

14. If a relationship has to be a secret, you shouldn’t be in it.

15. Everything can change in the blink of an eye. But don’t worry; God never blinks.

16. Life is too short for long pity parties. Get busy living, or get busy dying.

17. You can get through anything if you stay put in today.

18. A writer writes. If you want to be a writer, write.

19. It’s never too late to have a happy childhood. But the second one is up to you and no one else.

20. When it comes to going after what you love in life, don’t take no for an answer.

21. Burn the candles, use the nice sheets, wear the fancy lingerie. Don’t save it for a special occasion. Today is special.

22. Overprepare, then go with the flow.

23. Be eccentric now. Don’t wait for old age to wear purple.

24. The most important sex organ is the brain.

25. No one is in charge of your happiness except you.

26. Frame every so-called disaster with these words: “In five years, will this matter?”

27. Always choose life.

28. Forgive everyone everything.

29. What other people think of you is none of your business.

30. Time heals almost everything. Give time time.

31. However good or bad a situation is, it will change.

32. Your job won’t take care of you when you are sick. Your friends will. Stay in touch.

33. Believe in miracles.

34. God loves you because of who God is, not because of anything you did or didn’t do.

35. Whatever doesn’t kill you really does make you stronger.

36. Growing old beats the alternative – dying young.

37. Your children get only one childhood. Make it memorable.

38. Read the Psalms. They cover every human emotion.

39. Get outside every day. Miracles are waiting everywhere.

40. If we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else’s, we’d grab ours back.

41. Don’t audit life. Show up and make the most of it now.

42. Get rid of anything that isn’t useful, beautiful or joyful.

43. All that truly matters in the end is that you loved.

44. Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need.

45. The best is yet to come.

46. No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.

47. Take a deep breath. It calms the mind.

48. If you don’t ask, you don’t get.

49. Yield.

50. Life isn’t tied with a bow, but it’s still a gift.

Monster Mash

Trick or Treating 2009 was a hit! Josh had a blast, Vivi could not have cared less! We took her to 3 houses. It was SO HOT and her bedtime, so my Grandmother took her back home. Josh did very well saying “trick or treat” but had trouble remembering to thank the people. He was always too into seeing what candy they gave him. Last year, he would just walk into people’s houses, so it was a definite upgrade Now we are in November, which happens to be my favorite month. It edges out December by a hair b/c of Thanksgiving. I love the food. I know Christmas and Thanksgiving have similar menus but T’giving comes first so it wins. Maybe with Vivi’s birthday being in December, it will now take the lead? We’ll just have to see!

Trick or Treating:

10

Again, this is a little late but you will remember I’ve had a busy last half of the week!

My beautiful little baby is 10 months old! She is still so sweet-natured and laid back. I always get that from the nursery workers at church, they just love how calm she is. She STILL has NO teeth. I’m getting a little worried but my Dr. has assured me this is not abnormal. I don’t know what they could do for her if it was abnormal. I don’t think they could just make teeth grow. She is quite a climber, as you will see in the video I included. We will really have to put the crib tent up soon. I do not want to have her climbing out in the middle of the night!

She eats mostly table foods now. She loves everything she has tried. If it’s something safe for her to eat, she’s had it. We are still careful with meat that we give her since she has no teeth, so she mainly eats baby food meat. She also likes the Gerber “hot dogs”, they are really soft and easy for her to eat.She feeds herself really well, too. She loves to try and feed me pieces of her food, that is a new trick. It’s really sweet. I’ll say “Can Mommy have some?” and she’ll put a piece in my mouth. I don’t eat those Gerber hot dogs, though!

She “talks” a lot but the only real words she has said are “mama” & “dada”. She has said them to the correct person! She has also started pointing at things and when she does sometimes she’ll point then babble something. Like she’s asking what it is or telling me what it is Cute. She understands many more words than I realize. Like, I can ask her where Rosco is (one of our cats) and she’ll start looking down and all over for him. Same for when I ask where Josh is. She has this book that speaks out loud when you open it.  I repeat what it says just out of the blue and she’ll crawl around and find the book and open it to the page I said-it’s amazing!

She takes 3 8 oz. bottles a day, eats 3 full meals and has at least one snack a day. During the mid-morning and mid-afternoon she has water spiked with a splash of juice. Not that I need to defend that decision but it’s 100% juice not from concentrate, usually with no sugar added, for those who were wondering. A little secret for you: A little bit of the right juice won’t harm your children!

She crawls with her belly off the ground now and is cruising around furniture. She even lets go for a few seconds. So, soon she’ll be taking those first steps. Again, I’m in no hurry! I love the age she is and the stage she’s in- I want to keep her this way forever!

Pics: I am not as happy with these pics as previous sessions! She was not cooperative and when she was, she didn’t smile!

Video:

It’s Halloween

Here are the pics from Josh’s parade today. He looked really cute and was the only one of his kind that I saw! I saw tons of superheroes and princesses/fairies. There were a few firemen too.  Josh chose this costume and he chose well, I liked that he was the only one.  Vivi did not get dressed up today but Saturday she will be, can’t wait!

Please notice in the picture of kids that Josh is not in, the little boy dressed up as a gnome! So CUTE! Very original. I also liked the girl close to Josh in a couple of pics dressed up as an Indian (whoops-Native American) princess.  That girl is always dressed up really cute for school

All The Pretty Ponies

Last Saturday, I took Josh to the St. Johns County Fair. It’s the county south of us. It was fun but a lot smaller than the Greater Jax Fair we went to last year. That fair will be here in a couple of weeks. I guess since it’s still so warm to be “fall” the fairs don’t take place until later in the year. He rode the bumper cars for the 1st time (he calls them pumper cars) and a pony for the 1st time! He looked really cute and very relaxed. He loved it!

Tomorrow he has his Halloween parade @ school! It was so cute last year to see all the kids dressed up. I’ll leave his costume a secret and tell you that Vivi will probably be dressed up too-I haven’t decided yet, though. I mean, she will be for sure on Saturday but maybe or maybe not tomorrow. It should be a fun week/weekend. My Grandma’s coming tomorrow and of course GA/fl is this weekend. I don’t have much hope for us winning, but you never know!

here are the pics:

October

How convenient, a song by a popular band(U2) that is perfect for my title. Ahhhh, it is finally fall! Football, festivals, decorations in stores for holidays that are kinda far off, and who can leave out sweating in 89 degree heat while pumpkin hunting?? OH! I’m sorry, you don’t sweat when hunting for a pumpkin? You must be lucky enough to live in an area of the country that has something called “seasons”. I know, if you’re reading this and a native of Florida you may not be familiar with the concept of a “season”.  There are 4 of them, usually, and here in Florida there are only 2! I think Florida’s invented it’s own seasons:

1) Springer

2) Sumwinter

I know all of you are very smart and can guess why I call the “seasons” here those clever names It’s so true and I really miss my seasons back in Georgia. I did a post very similar to this one last yr…complaining about lack of seasons. Usually, I get agitated when I read other blogs and the author goes on and on about the weather-it’s just so redundant or boring- but I feel a little piece of me has been stolen with no true Autumn here to speak of.

I did take my children to the pumpkin patch @ Josh’s school yesterday. It was a lot of fun I got so many good pictures! It’s SO crazy to think about last year when I took Josh and he was my only child-what did I ever do without my angel Vivian??

8 Days a Week

That’s how many days I wish the week had after our trip to Isle of Palms, SC! The weather was pretty crummy but, hey, a week at the beach nonetheless! The reason for the trip was to celebrate my mother in law’s 60th birthday. It was my inlaws, us, Troy’s grandmother, his older brother & his family and Troy’s younger brother. There were 5 kids under 4, so you can imagine it was pretty chaotic at times! We had a big house that had 6 bedrooms. The 3rd level was a big bonus room that had 2 full beds and 2 twin beds, so we took that room and put Josh in one of the twins. Troy took the other twin mattress and a wardrobe and blocked off part of the room so Josh was kind of cut off from us in his own room. We called it “Fort Joshua”. He did perfect, never missed a beat sleeping in an odd place. We had a fan in there w/him to drown out noise, as well. We put Vivian in the master bedroom closet in her pack-n-play. It was a very big closet and once you closed the door, you could hear nothing. It was amazing how quiet it was. We also put a fan in there.  She did wonderfully, as well. The 1st night she cried for like 10 minutes but all the other nights she went down without fail.

We went to see the U.S.S. Yorktown, The Charleston Aquarium (2 times), played on the beach, ate LOTS of good food, fished in the ocean, swam in the pool some and enjoyed each other’s company! Troy and I even got to go on a date to see “Inglorious Basterds”! We first ate at an amazing Tapas Bar-so GOOD! The movie was great, not as violent as I expected it to be. With it being a Tarantino film, you know it was pretty violent,though. It was not as good as the Kill Bills but I’d recommend seeing it if you’re into his movies. At the Yorktown, since it’s from WWII, it had scenes staged around in it to show the way of life on the ship. That’s why in the pics you’ll see a couple of creepy mannequins.

The kids were all so cute together. Anna and Josh had a blast playing together (she’s 3 months older) and Vivian and Brooke, who is 19 mon, actually played together some too. Vivi loved watching Brooke and would squeal to get her attention, very cute! That was the best part, seeing the kids interact. It was a great week and I’m excited for next year-this is going to be a new tradition!

Here’s a link to the house we stayed in: House

Here are the pictures!

Good Day, Sunshine

Vivian was 9 months on Wednesday! She also had her checkup that day. She is 19.14 lbs (75%) 28 1/4 in. (75%) and her head circumference, I don’t remember, but I  do remember it is also the 75%. So proportioned, she is!

They ran out of flu shots right before her appt. so I have to bring her back next week to get one. I am also to try and give Josh a little bit of a scrambled egg to see if he is still allergic to them. If not, he will come to get a flu shot too. People with egg allergies could have a reaction to the vaccine b/c it has a small amount of egg protein in it. I hope he can get one! With him being in school 3 mornings a week and us travelling in a couple of  weeks, he needs the booster. I’m nervous about giving him the egg though! He did not go into anaphylactic shock before (almost 3 yrs ago) so, hopefully he has outgrown it.

Back to Vivi. She did get the Polio and Hep b vaccines. She also got her iron levels checked. The nurse told me that they like the level to be above 11 and hers was 12.4 so that was great. The dr. told me @ 11 months I can give her cow’s milk and not to waste any more money on jars of baby food. She can have pretty much everything we eat, with the exception of high-allergen risk items (fresh strawberries,eggs,nuts) so there is no point for baby food. I was already planning on skipping over the stage 3 jars they have so I agree with him, but I will still do some b/c sometimes it’s just quicker!

Not much has changed since I last posted her monthly update. She can pull all the way up now, but mostly still just pulls to her knees. She has started to rock back and forth when she hears music, that is really cute! And, on Monday, I started to sing “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” to her and she started opening and closing her hand like I do when I do the motions in the song. REALLY cute and smart She also loves for me to hold her as we pick her outfit out for the day. She beams when we look through her many clothes and decide what to wear. That’s my girl, a clothes lover!

In comparison to Josh when he was this age, she seems to be more content with just sitting and entertaining herself. He was already climbing stairs, pulling up like crazy and was about to walk. He could NOT wait to get moving, but she is more laid back in that aspect.  I really hope she stays this way, that boy will not sit and color or do any kind of art. He has to be on his feet rolling cars or throwing things and trying to wrestle us. I guess he’s a typical boy, I just hope she’s a typical girl! Josh was also always 98% or above in height and weight, whereas, she is still above but closer to average.

Anyhow, here are her glamour shots…she was not as cooperative in these as she normally is but I managed to get a few good ones.

Peaceful, Easy Feeling

It was a very tough week for Troy last week, when his best friend passed away suddenly. He spoke at the funeral last Friday…he said it was the toughest thing he’s ever done. I can believe it, I don’t think I could do anything like that. But, he did and het met us in Panama City on Saturday.  He said he felt a sense of relief when it was over.

The vacation was already planned, we just started a day later. It was good timing, in a way. Troy had a few days to come to terms with his death and not have to be forced back into work prematurely.

We had a great time. Vivian set foot on the beach and ocean for the 1st time in her life, rode a carousel for the 1st time (had NO CLUE how to hold on!) Josh had fun being his crazy self and we ate LOTS of good food. We ate at The Treasure Ship, The Boatyard, Angelo’s and a couple of smaller places for lunch. The best meal award goes to The Boatyard. It’s right next to Captain Anderson’s, it was the best I’ve ever eaten in PCB, for sure.  The accomodations were as beautiful as ever (thx gma deb & grandaddy truck) and we surely didn’t want to leave!

Three Little Birds

Josh has started school! He goes Mon, Wed & Fri mornings. I am so happy that he loves school. It’s a good little school, too. Great teachers and good families involved. I can’t believe next year he will be in pre-k!!!

Here he is on the 1st day

I got a wild hair and wanted to “make” him a bookbag. I bought the bag @ Hobby Lobby and he chose the decorations (iron ons and buttons)! It was fun!