She sits

 

Little Miss Lily has fully gained control of her trunk and can actually sit and play. It is amazing and delightful and so nice. Of course, we don’t leave her on hard surfaces because she is prone to falling over and bonking her forehead/chin/cheek.

She also has amazing balance skills and can hold herself up if she’s propped. I’m excited about all of these things because soon, that means I’ll be able to feed her ‘toddler food’ instead of mushy, blended ‘baby food.’  Her brother remains a big fan … except, when he’s not. He is so happy to see her in the mornings – and she is so happy to see him. She kicks. She squeals. And then they start to interact and it’s just luck of the draw if it goes south or, if the angels sing and they play nicely together.

 

Jamisen has a wide network of friends. He is super friendly and outgoing. One of our goals with him is to raise a good husband so to that end, both Chris and I encourage him to cook with us, to clean and to craft with us. Chris even built Jamisen his very own pint-sized craft table at the perfect height for our little toddlers. Yes, he has made soap with me and loved it.

Jamisen and I love craft time. I spend most Friday mornings at home (not to worry – I make up for those “lost” work hours at night after the kids have gone to sleep) with him, working on a variety of crafts. I call it my “Pinterest Mommy” mornings. Kiwi Crate has been helpful for me on the mornings I haven’t had time to plan a craft.  Sometimes, we invite little friends over and have play dates around crafts. I gotta raise this boy into a crafty husband, right?!

Everyone told me when Jamisen was born that it would go fast. Only now that I have a little baby at home has that really sunk in. As pressing as work issues seem, going back to my touchstone value of ‘family’ and remembering much advice over the last couple of years keeps me at home on Friday mornings. I know that I’ll look back on this time with fondness and nostalgia.

2/9/2014 – A postscript: I woke up far too early this morning and my first thought was that this blog post was a wee bit cheery and only was sharing the fun things about my life at home. So, for the record, my life with two kids is perfectly normal – as in “not perfect at all.” I slept walked through the early morning hours with Lily (she was up for an hour last night asking for milk and comfort) and Jamisen (who was also up for a different hour in the middle of the night because he wanted a charger for a non-operable cell phone that he is insisting on keeping on his bed; yes, you read that sentence correctly). I’m weary and I’m terrified because I hear that never goes away. The kids have both been sick this week. Lily had a “two slug cold” and Jamisen had a hacking cough. I judge the severity of colds by how much thick yellow and green mucus is flowing down faces at any given time and she had a doozy “two slugger” this week. Jamisen got bit and scratched at school so now I’m convinced he’s going to contract flesh-eating virus through his open wounds. And, I make choices every evening about if I should clean the house, floss my teeth or lay out my outfit for the next day – because, there’s no way to get all three in. I own a “magic camera” (for the record, it’s a Sony Cybershot DSC-RX100) that makes these kids look like perfectly behaved angels. The perfectly posed snapshots do not mean that our life is not a completely messy, normal, laughter and crying filled existence.