Conversation with Baby

Why?


That's his newest word. My other kids were much older when they started this. It's never ending. This morning we were walking in the house after taking Cowboy to school. This is how it went.

Baby: I see daddy.
Me: No daddy's sleeping.
Baby: Why?
Me: Because he's tired.
Baby: Why?
Me: Because he works hard.
Baby: Why?
Me: Because that's what daddy's do.
Baby:Why?

And on and on and on.


This was the first of SEVERAL conversation just like this that took place today. He's lucky he's cute.

Create

Several weeks ago, I cleaned out my sewing cabinet. And then constructed a tower of unfinished projects.



Then spent the next couple of weeks deconstructing the tower and constructing cute stuff. The first thing I made was this cowboy couch. Last Christmas, Cowboy got an inflatable Batman chair. Just hours after inflating it, his 12 year old brother decided to sit in it. No more bat man chair. Cowboy was devastated. We tried to find another but couldn't so I offered to make him one. Matt brought some really stiff foam home from work and I bought some cowboy fabric and we made a couch. Sadly, the flannel that I bought didn't work very well for a couch. It fell apart after a few months. So this time, I made the cover out of corduroy. It works much better.

And he loves it! So does his brother.




Next, I had to finish the bumper I made for Amber's baby. I made three sides of it and ran out of fabric. Then made several trips to IKEA for more fabric. They were out every time. Then I noticed that they weren't getting any more fabric in from that entire line so I bought a coordinating fabric so I could take the existing bumpers apart and remake them. Stripes on one side, green hippos on the other. They turned out cute.



And here's Georgia's bed with all the pillows I made. Try not to get too distracted by the ADORABLE little girl.



I totally just stole those pictures from Amber's facebook page. I hope she doesn't mind. So one week after I took those bumpers apart and remade them, remember it was AFTER I went back to IKEA several times, I went to IKEA. And they had a giant bin FULL of that striped fabric. Oh well. The hippos are cuter anyway.

So after that project it was blanket time. I mentioned here on the blog that I was thinking of opening an etsy shop. I bought lots of fabric a couple of months ago for that purpose. But then a bunch of people I know decided to have babies. So I made all of these blankets and have given all but two of them away. But the last two were made with someone in mind. So, still no etsy shop. But here's the blankets...









This one has a matching burpee.

After I finished all the blankets, it was time to make some pillows. I made these for Cowboy's bed.


And these for the girls beds.

This is Rockstar's bed.

And this is Sassy's.

And while I was making things for the girly room, I made a place for them to put all of their very important pictures and keepsakes.

They have those things COVERED now. It didn' take long.

And I made these bags for the kiddos a while back. They were not part of the pile, just wanted to show them off.



And I did these for my piano students for Christmas.


So I finished the whole stack except for two pillows. My sewing machine broke. It actually broke about halfway through, I borrowed my friends machine. So now I'm dreaming up more projects, dreaming about new a new sewing machine and trying to decide if I should start a shop. So, to all three of you that read my blog...what do you think? Could I create, do something I love, and make a little bit of money too? Should I go for it?

2

That baby of mine just keeps growing. I've tried to slow him down but he won't have it. And now he's gone and had another birthday. Stinker! He turned two yesterday. It's hard to believe that two years have passed already. He is so much fun. He is talking like crazy all of the sudden. He has always been very vocal but spoke his own language. A few months ago, the kids decided he was speaking Polish. But now he says everything. He says all of his brothers and sisters names quite clearly (and loudly when provoked). He asks for drinks and snacks then he says thank you and tells me it's yummy. And it sounds like, " dant doo, iss hummy mommeee."
This morning I said "come here, let's fix your hair" and he said, "I comeeen mommy."

He loooves to play outside and will stay outside all day. He rides his tractor up and down the driveway and rides in the Jeep while Cowboy drives. He likes sidewalk chalk and bubbles and following daddy around and doing everything he does.

He loves books. The big kids ask me almost every night if they can read in their beds and it didn't take him long to decide that he should "read" in bed too. I love standing outside his door and listening to him read. "wuss dat? puppy. wuss dat? car. wuss dat? baby."

He went to the doctor today for his two year visit. He weighs 28.2 lbs. and is 36 inches tall. The doctor said he is long and lean and will probably grow to be 6'2". He had to get four shots and was seriously mad about it. When his shots were done he said, "less go mommy!"

I'm really excited to continue watching him grow and seeing the person he becomes. But for now we've got to figure out how to teach him to share, keep him from throwing himself on the floor when he doesn't get his way, take a way the pacifier, get him to use the potty and transition him to the big boy bed. Hmmm. Maybe we should just sit and snuggle and let him be my baby. Just a little bit longer? Please?

Marathon Man

Last year I started talking about running a half marathon. But just talking about it. Nothing more. I talked to Matt's brother Brent about it so he started talking about it too. We talked about several different races we could do, a 5K to get us started, when we would run the half, which one we would do. A lot of talk. Then at Thanksgiving Brent told us about the ING. It's in March so we have plenty of time to train, blah, blah, blah, etc. So supposedly Matt, Brent and I started training for a half marathon. But in reality Matt was in the last semester of nursing school, super busy with clinical work and final exams. Which meant that I was a single mom. So we put off our "training" until after the new year. And then we had the coldest winter that Georgia has ever seen. So we started going to the gym and running on the treadmill. And let me just say that for me, that is torture. Pure torture. And we weren't very consistent. With five kids there is always something else to do. So I decided that I wouldn't do it. If I couldn't run all 13.1 miles, I didn't want to do it. But Matt was committed. Mostly because he had committed two of his friends from work to doing it also. Committed, not so much to training but to doing the race. But a week before the race he still hadn't registered. His brother hadn't either.

It was a week before the race, hours before the registration deadline and those guys spent at least two hours texting back and forth and talking on the phone. Waiting for the other to register. One wouldn't do it without the other. Finally Matt did it. And Brent followed suit. It was official. They were running a half marathon.

The day before the race, Matt went to pick up his race packet. And he texted me this picture:

And this message:

"We're supposed to do this kind of stuff together. Miss you."

He was right. I should have done it just to do it with him. I felt it then and I really felt it the next morning riding the Marta into the city at 5 am. And even more when we arrived at Centennial Park. We met up with Brent and I walked them to the start. There were so many people there, it was amazing.

Here they are right before they started.



And this is after they finished.



Matt finished in 3:00:58. Brent was 2:20ish. It was so amazing to see Matt finish. I am so proud of him. My sister and her family and my cousin Ami and her family were all there to see him finish. And everyone was inspired.

We got home and registered for the Peachtree Road Race on the 4th of July. It's a 10K. It will be the first race of many that we will do together.