Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Two weeks already...

That's how long it's been since my last post. Didn't I resolve to be better about this in 2008? (Maybe that's why I shouldn't bother with resolutions...)

Hmm...what's been going on with us?

- Madelyn has been working away at her dance recital piece, and I still don't really get to see any of her classes. Bummer. But they did schedule her recitals, and they are taking place May 24th and 25th. I'm so excited to see her! We had to order her costume a couple of weeks ago, and we got to see pics of it. She's going to be adorable! They're dancing to that old song, "Lollipop" (think "Stand By Me") and have frilly pink tutus. I don't know if I can handle that much girly-ness! LOL.

- I went out for a girls night out with my good friends Allison and Kristen this past weekend, and we had a great time. We went out for fondue at The Melting Pot and had the most interesting, relaxing night. No kids, a nice glass of wine, and yummy cheese, coq au vin, and dark chocolate raspberry fondue. Mmm, I'm drooling just thinking about it again! :-) As much as we all love to get our kids together - since they are all girls and are all relatively close in age - it was so nice to go out and just have some adult time without the 7 little princesses. Definitely gotta do that again sometime soon!

- Lyla is growing up right before my eyes. I can't get over how much she's changed, even in the past month. She's pulling up now, and even letting go and standing unassisted from time to time. She seems desperate to walk, and it all totally freaks me out because she's still not even 16 pounds! You look at her and think she's 5 months old or so, and then you see her crawling across the room, pulling up and trying to cruise/walk/stand. It's too funny. She's also eating more finger food, waving, and chattering away. She does her own little version of dancing when the put music on and go to town. I'm biased, but I think she's just adorable.

I need to post some videos and pics at some point, but for now that's all the news that's fit to print!

Wednesday, January 2, 2008

Our little librarian

Sienna seems to be showing a real love of books and reading already. I know Maddie was interested in them, but Sienna spends so much time just poring through books of all sorts, carrying them around the house, reading them to herself...and oh yeah, destroying them as well. She has a bit of a destructive streak in her (ok, maybe more than a bit), and while she loves books she also loves to write in them, draw on pages, and even tear them from time to time. I've already got one library book that I'm going to be paying for this week that she managed to get to before I hid Maddie's books from reach.

Despite the "improvements" she seems to want to make to them, she is really adorable when it comes to her books. Yesterday, I was cleaning and organizing our walk-in closet in the master bedroom. To keep tabs on her, I brought in her Dora castle and people, and we pretended Dora was hiding away with her friends; Sienna thought it was particularly funny to pretend Dora was sleeping in the closet and kept whispering to me loudly, "SHHH! You need to be quiet!" But while in my closet, she found a paperback novel I finished recently. She must have spent a half hour sitting next to me while I sorted and organized clothes, flipping through the 200+ pages as if she were reading it. No pictures or anything, just words. She kept calling it "my book" and when I asked about Dora and how her nap was going said, "You don't take away my book!" (she's in a very possessive phase right now where she thinks everyone is going to take things away from her -- I think this is a direct result of having to fight to keep her stuff from Maddie all the time these days!). Finally, she put down the book and looked at me with the cutest puppy dog eyes and shook her head, saying, "Nope. I can't read the book. It's too hard!"

Awwww! I felt so bad for her...but it was oh so cute!

Here's to a new year!

Happy 2008! I missed posting on January 1st by a few minutes, but have been reflecting the past couple of days on what my resolutions for the year should be. I'm so-so when it comes to keeping my resolutions. I pretty much never forget about them during the year, but I definitely go back and forth between really keeping them and just totally ignoring them. Still, I do think that the first of the year is a great time to set some goals for yourself, try to frame up what you want the year to be all about , what you'd like to accomplish, etc. So with that in mind, here are a few I've come up with:

- Getting and staying fit. I've been on a diet/weight loss/exercise kick for a while now, and am just about at my goal. But now that I've lost a decent amount of weight, I really want to get in great shape. Brad gave me a number of things for Christmas to help me keep up with my exercise at home (things I asked for!), so I have no excuse. My motto: "Fab shape in '08!"

- Planning meals in advance, and eating together as a family. This is a tough one for me -- three young kids at dinner time can really make it difficult, if not next to impossible, to find something we can all sit down, eat together, and actually like. Add to that the fact that we both work full time and 5-7 PM is sort of the crazy time in our household, and it gets even more difficult. But Maddie has really been into the idea of us all eating together lately, and I don't have any good explanations for her as to why I can't make that happen. So this is one I will make happen this year. I also want to be better at planning more effective grocery shopping trips, so having meals planned out in advance should definitely help.

- Having more patience to get through the toddler/preschool phases the kids seem to continuously throw my way. I don't really know if this one is a resolution, or a plea for a total personality change on my part, LOL! It falls into the category of annoying resolutions for me, because it's very vague and hard to put an actual plan behind. But it's something I'm going to work on.

- Visiting a financial planner and getting a solid plan in place for retirement, college savings, etc. Having just turned 34, I'm thinking it's time for a bit of a "master plan," so to speak. No more flying by the seat of our pants! Honestly, even the thought of paying for three weddings has been freaking me out lately! (And will that even be in any way customary by the time my girls get married? Not even sure how I feel about paying for their weddings, but it's just one of the many expenses I know *could* be on the horizon.)

So there you have it. I'm hoping that by "writing" them out here, I'll have to hold myself accountable a little bit. Stay tuned... I'll report back my progress next year.