Happy New Year!

Hard to believe 2011 is within a few hours of being over. A year ago today we had 1 child, slept through the night routinely, had disposable income, and I was as big as a house! 🙂 As I write this, I’m in my baby’s room, watching him finish his bottle as his eyelids get heavier and heavier. It feels like he’s been a part of our life for far longer than 9 months! We really are so lucky– it’s amazing, really. Although in a lot of ways I think of NYE as a trumped-up holiday, I have to at least appreciate the opportunity for reflection it gives us.
Happy New Year, everyone!

Family Christmas card

Our family Christmas card is going out (as I get addresses pulled together and time away from work/family/home obligations to address envelopes) and I purposely included the family blog URL to shame myself into actually updating this. I will continue to make many of these private (if they involve the kids, national secrets, etc.)– contact me if you’d like the password (if I know you, I’ll probably give it to you!).

Happy holidays!

Angie

Shoes

Harry's acting out, it appears

Harry has chosen to act out lately by attacking our shoes when we aren’t looking. I honestly think he destroyed Andrew’s shoe in less than 5 minutes.

Pinkalicious Cupcakes

Recently I decided that, since I was going to be up with the baby anyway, I might as well do something other than just watching “The Rachel Maddow Show” podcast or listening to the “Bossypants” audiobook for the nth time. I chose to make cupcakes in honor of Audrey’s newfound obsession with the book “Pinkalicious”. If you don’t know the book, it’s about a girl who loves pink so much that, when given the opportunity to eat pink cupcakes, actually becomes pink. I went out Thursday and used a gift card to buy a copy of the book for Audrey’s classroom. Then, Thursday night, I set about making cupcakes. Baking while trying really hard to be quiet is an interesting experience, one I probably won’t be doing again for a while. The cupcakes turned out well. I won’t be competing in any cake decorating contests in the near future, but they were good enough for 2-3 year olds!

Protected: Life as we now know it

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Audrey’s first circus

Lessons I learned from Audrey’s first circus:

1) Bring cash to the circus. Lots of cash. Then bring more.
2) “Circus” does not necessarily mean “tent”. Bring sunscreen.
3) Don’t go to the circus on the hottest day of the year so far.
4) Bring more cash.
5) When you inevitably fail to bring sufficient cash, looking at the circus’ big snake or climbing a hill can provide alternative entertainment.

“Word Cloud: How Toy Ad Vocabulary Reinforces Gender Stereotypes”

The other day I was rather troubled when my daughter referred to one of her sippy cups as being a “boy glass”. It has characters from Toy Story on it, and the one she always notices is Buzz Lightyear. As a formerly knee-jerk feminist (I’ve grown weary in my old age, but the sentiment is still there), it really troubled me to hear that, so now I’ve become even more focused on gender roles in what she sees. I happened across this article last night, which feeds into my current train of thought. It isn’t really surprising, but it’s interesting to see this quantified & displayed in such a visually compelling way.

http://www.achilleseffect.com/2011/03/word-cloud-how-toy-ad-vocabulary-reinforces-gender-stereotypes/

Protected: Keeping me honest

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Fun with Office Supplies

Fun with Office Supplies a video by lyonbriggs on Flickr.

I’ll post real information here soon (I hope), but in the meantime here’s some video of Audrey enjoying a long strip of bubble wrap that wasn’t needed at my office anymore. (She pauses long enough to provide camera tips to Ransom.)

This week

It’s so strange to think about what life will be like in just a few short days… we’re due to meet our son in just a few days (unless he decides to move that timeline up!). Last time, I was paranoid about all the typical new mom stuff– delivery, nursing, life changes, etc. This time, I keep thinking of everything in terms of what it means to Audrey (how can we make her feel special? How do we make things as consistent as possible for her?). I almost worry we’re shortchanging the baby by not worrying about him more! 🙂 She knows there’s a baby in the abstract, but I’m sure she doesn’t really get how big a change this all will be (how could she?!). In an effort to keep some attention on her, we’ve signed her up for parent/tot ice skating lessons at a local rink. She’s been really excited lately to try out Ransom’s rollerblades, so hopefully this is a good experience for both of them. Now I need to find special Mommy/Daughter activities…

Audrey tries out Ransom's rollerblades