from m.writes

Acceptance, understanding, commitment, laughter, hope, and love create an atmosphere of peace and stability. Under those conditions bread and milk and a dirt floor can sustain a family, and they will create the spirit of a magnificent home.

such true words from the wonderful mother of a wonderful momma.

Discovery

petey has discovered baxter. enjoy this little slideshow/movie we made of the two of them! Click here to get to the site where the movie lives. At that site you will see a picture of Baxter and I under "movies"...click it and you'll see our movie play! To all the Grandparents out there - let me know if you have trouble viewing it!

coming soon.......a movie of petey swimming! i am having a ball learning how to use imovie on our mac. am hoping you'll enjoy the outcome and a fun new way to share what petey is up to. his latest entertainment is blowing bubbles at mealtime. he thinks its so fun to blow bubbles into his food and watch it spray on his tray. he also seems to be discovering the fun of object permanence - when you lay him in his crib and disappear from view, he rolls over and strains his neck to see over the edge of the crib and gets a big grin on his face when he sees you're still there.

picking up alie tonight! i can't wait to see my gal!

first cubs game!

petey saw his first cubs game this past sunday. what a fun day spent with our wonderful friends adam and emily!

he was thrilled by the spectacle, but overall disappointed with their play that day. its good training for a life as a cubs fan for his first game to be a loss. so sad.....someday, petey, they will be great!

our little fish

petey loves his swim class. its amazing the way he kicks his legs, splashes his hands, willingly puts his face toward the water......and yes, he has even been underwater more than once. its absolutely incredible. videos coming soon..

this girl

will be in my house one week from today!!!


if you know her, you probably understand my overwhelming sense of excitement. :)

breathing

i'm feeling a bit overwhelmed with good feelings right now. for perhaps (no, definitely!) the first time since....fifth grade.....i have time. time to fill with the right things when i wake up, and each day those right things we fill the day with can be different. on a whim.
time to spend focusing on the right people right there in the moment.
sure there are things on the horizon, a big long to-do list, stuff i stress about and things that make me groan thinking about getting to....but there's time for it all now. i'm not bouncing between things and events and obligations and schedules and guilt. i'm going and doing and breathing and smiling while i'm at it. i'm loving having time to let petey sleep when he needs to sleep. and to spend extra time letting him tickle the blowing curtains with his fingertips in awe. time to watch him smile as he discovers more of our world. and time to do things like swim class with him and yoga by myself (this sunday I hope!)-time to play footsies and look at the sunset together. time to make plans and dream my dreams again, and time to maybe make some of those dreams happen again! it just feels good and right and certainly something i needed. its here in my lap and i'm so very grateful for it. for a moment. to breathe. to smile. to live.

new things

swim class - and face in the water, oh my!
green beans and prunes (not together).
toes in the green grass.
fingers touching palm trees - and little eyes watching the palms sway in the wind.
holiday weekends - 4 days with daddy home!
and soon - baseball; cubs vs. padres this sunday afternoon :)

good.

seriously? what a fun week i am having.
(other than reid having super duper gross long days at work....just had to throw that disclaimer in there, we miss him and are proud of him for working his tushie off).
petey had his first swim class today at Floaties . his teacher is miss lori and she's so sweet. its funny how proud a momma can feel watching her 5 month baby swish back and forth in the water. :) he was so calm laying on his back with his head propped on miss lori's shoulder. he was so calm when she laid him farther back with his hair in the water and the water lapping up on his cheeks and ears. next class he'll even get his face in the water for a tiny second. this is all about teaching him to be comfortable in the water. its amazing watching him. he loves the water. he loves watching all the older kids scamper around and make their older kid kind of noises that echo off the walls of the facility. he loves looking at the huge pictures of smiling kids faces as they jump in the water that are posted on the walls. i think he also loves not wearing a diaper for 30 minutes of the day!

this weekend reid has so many days off! the only thing we've got planned so far is a cubs game/trip downtown with adam and emily on sunday.

and so so so so soon after that my best gal alie is coming for a weekend visit! and THAT is super exciting news.

ellyn and matt please move to cali.

we are having so much fun with elle and matt in town!

petey also ran his first race yesterday - 4 miles across the coronado bridge and swam for the first time during our great cookout at adam and emily's house.

can you believe it?

thank you to the grandma's

petey has really nice grandma's.
they like to spoil him. in a good, sensible way. :)

thanks for the awesome jumper toy and high chair. they are wonderful!

farmer's market

beatiful carlsbad sunshine and breeze.
chatting with my sister as she saunters in her sundress and shades.
fresh green beans.
dazzling strawberries a-plenty.
huge magnificent cucumbers.
delicious wonderful red, red tomatoes.
the kind that remind you to be dissatisfied with the ones from the store.
so good.
lettuce.
flowers.
happy vendors. happy shoppers. insanely happy pups around.
walnut cranberry scones. oh my. oh my.
toting my babe craning his head from side to side to see it all go by.
this is a wonderful happy yesterday-morning memory.

mr destructo?.

unlike a beautiful butterfly gently and slowly, but powerfully emerges from a cocoon, my baby is suddenly launching himself into the mr. destructo mode. not that he is terribly mobile yet so my house is still safe.....but he is starting to scoot/slither. he can scoot forward a little while lying on his back. and he can also scoot backward a little. just enough to lodge his head firmly and directly in the corner of the crib. just enough to kickbox the mirror hanging from his discovery mat. or the dog's face. baxter especially likes that one. once content to lie there and watch the blinking light and the pretty dangly things from his discovery mat, he is now content to inspect each dangly thing in his mouth, one by one, which involves pulling it off the support bars and shoving it into his mouth. after he's done with that and bored with that particular flavor of pastic-y goodness, he waves his arm spastically and then launches the thing across the room. usually with his right hand, sorry dad. then it on to the next thing. when there are no more dangly's for him to grab, lick, throw....then he turns to his climbing trick. he basically uses his feet as hands to get at the things he can't reach. and while doing so starts slithering his body closer to the thing he's trying to include in his grab, lick, throw sequence. its quite entertaining to watch. and also bit concerning? we better move quick so i can get the new house covered in a layer of duct tape and bubble wrap. i have a feeling this is going to get interesting and fast!

in this picture - you can see the 2 victims of his grab, eat, launch sequence. also, his head started out at the TOP of the mat, up by the sunshine. wiggly wiggly boy.

good to be home

aunt ellyn and (soon to be) uncle matt are here visiting horray!!!!

thankful.

this life is the breath of fresh air i've been craving.
this life is giving me time to pay attention. time to get to things. time to imagine. create. breathe.

it's been one day since i've been home, since i've started my "new job". and life already feels different. unpacked. laundered. tidied.

my mind is spinning with the possibilities, the adventures, the wonderful freedom of having nothing on the schedule this week except what we put there.

some things i'm daydreaming of this morning:
-planting a garden in our new back yard
-finding a beautiful craft cabinet that needs to be restored and then filling it with construction paper, crayons, popsicle sticks and all the other things a little one needs to create.
-hitting the carlsbad farmers market this saturday with my sister
-taking petey to the beach TODAY for his first wiggle in the sand
-finding personal handmade ideas that are just right for the special people in my life and making them, stashing them away, and rediscovering them just in time for the holidays.
...more to come...

we're back!

monday mornings....

...have a whole new fabulous feeling to them!

orange you glad?

carrots are on the menu and he loves loves them! we tried to go back to peas and he sort of stuck his nose up at them. he's all kinds of rolly-polly and busy playing with his toes and checking out the world around him. i propped him up in this sitting position and its the first time he didn't topple over....getting so big.

we love you, daddy! see you in a week!

insomniac?

i am pretty sure i develop a mild case of insomnia when reid is gone. its nothing severe, but as tired as i am, why am i not in bed? how do i keep finding things to do?

because if i am busy then i don't have to climb into bed all by myself at the end of the day. sure do miss him!

the photo is from our backpacking trip to sequoia. and that is where i wish my head was lying tonight. were lying? i'll have to look it up....it'll keep me up even later. :)

our saturday morning

sunshiny morning.
yoga pants.
brunch treats.
lady friends and their kiddos.
fun new toys.
sharing stories of how we met our boys.

thanks tracy and gals for a wonderful way to spend our saturday morning!

catch up with my life-

so i just finished a great book. it was one of those that i was really excited to finish so i read really really hard....it only took me 5 years. today i finished it and i know how it ends. you know when you read a good book and when its over you get a little bit sad and depressed and start looking for the next really amazing book? well i got to start my new amazing book today too and i'm really excited because THIS book, well its gonna last a LONG time. :)

sorry for the book analogy, but its one of the only ways i can think to explain how i'm feeling about being out of the navy. its official folks. i am now a proud owner of a dependent military id card. i am now a marine corps wife. i am now a mommy. and....this is the lucky part - despite the big change, i am still me! but now i am the me that has more time to pay attention to the really important things in life, particularly the little dude napping upstairs in a cute alligator onesie.

some of my amazing military wife/mom/awesome women/friends went to lunch with me today at chevy's to celebrate my graduation to "real life". it was such a ball, they saw 6 women coming through the door toting 6 children (and one on the way) and stashed us out on a private outdoor patio which was perfect for the 2 two-something little dudes to fly their airplanes around and crash them into the gas lamps over and over. its nice to finally feel like i have friends. feel connected in san diego. i have someone(s) to call who live right here locally if i need to vent or cry or be excited or feel lonely or need a running partner or a babysitter or just a friend to talk about nothing at all. i am quite a lucky lady. (and thanks to my ladies across the country who are always there for me as well...now if only we could "do lunch" every once in awhile!)

so, despite the strange newness of my new label in life (full-time mom. stay-at-home-mom? petey's mom. best mom ever?....haven't decided which label i am going to use yet when i introduce myself), it has happened, here i am, right here and right now in this very new moment in life with a huge expanse of adventures, travels, memories, struggles, triumphs, big hugs, dirty hands, rock collections, bug collections....and SO much more ahead of me. ahead of us.

i am ready for the ride. :)

and aren't these cool????