The one where I talk about my feelings....

I have a lot of feelings about Houston and Texas that I want to record before I leave. It's been a crazy ride the past few years. A ride that was not at all what I expected in a lot of ways. Our time in Austin was fun. My baby Tate was born there and Glenn attended an amazing graduate school. We met some good friends. Some life long friends. One of whom is moving to Denver too, in just a few months! Another good friend had her second boy just one day before Finn was born. We've spent a lot of time, day and night, texting and commiserating lately. They are such good friends.

Moving to Houston was exactly what I did not want. We spent a summer here while Glenn did an internship and, while I really tried to make the most of it, it was a very difficult experience. I did not want to move back here after that. But we did. And it wasn't all that bad. We met some wonderful people, found a home that we love, watched our sweet little Tate grow up, and had another beautiful little boy. We have truly made the most of our time here, taking advantage of every opportunity to get out and do things together. I'll miss our zoo. Getting a pass to the zoo was a GREAT decision and we absolutely got our money's worth. We spent many fun mornings and afternoons there and I only hope that Tate will have some memory of the good times we've spent there seeing all the amazing animals up close. We went to just about every museum down town, scoped out good neighborhoods for drives to see Christmas lights, went to the big rodeo, visited NASA, found fun new restaurants to try, went to parades and community festivals, ran our first half marathon together along the beach. Leaving here now, I have no regrets. Nothing else I wish I had done or seen. We've soaked up this area and had a blast doing so.

This week I've been feeling really nostalgic about Texas and my time here coming to an end. Counting down the days as they speed past. We've had so much to do in the little time since we found out we'd be moving that I feel like the time has gone even faster. And now I'm pretty sad that we're leaving and I don't know if we'll ever have occasion to come back. (It would be kinda funny if we're moved back here next year after all this!) Never in my wildest dreams when i was growing up would I have guessed I'd live in Texas. And now Texas will always hold a little special corner of my heart. It's where Glenn and I sort of got our start, away from family with only each other to rely on. It's where Glenn was diagnosed with cancer and we spent some scary times getting through it together. It's where we became a family. It's where our two little boys joined us and for that alone, Texas is a very special place to me.

There are things I will not miss, of course. I will not miss the soul-crushing summer heat, the gross bugs of every shape and size, the snakes and gators, the crime rate that I try not to think about so I don't get too freaked out, and the traffic. But overall I've been surprised how much I really like it here and I'll miss it. A lot.

Today my life is:

-Egg in a hole and orange juice.

- Sesame Street while I take a shower.

-Mystery smudges on my clothes.

-Not-so-mystery smudges on my clothes...can't decide which are more disconcerting.

-Toys scattered around the house, regardless of the fact that they've been picked up several times already.

-Deciding how much of little boy's pee on his pants or mine requires a change of pants and how much we can just let dry. (Do moms of girls get peed on regularly?)

-Digging out the light weight swaddling blankets because it's 80 degrees out and it's getting hot in here!

-A 6-week doctor appointment. (which involved a discussion about my headaches. The meds are helping immensely! As long as I take them I'm not in any pain anymore. It's wonderful!!! Hoping not to have to take them forever in order for the lack of pain to continue...)

- A flower arrangement and note from Glenn's boss saying thanks for being supportive of the move. So sweet.

-A nap attempt for all 3 of us. Alas, it was only an attempt today.

- Whining for no other reason than just to see what I'll do in response. It's one of those ornery boundary testing days. Love that.

-Looking forward to honey coming home from work. Spinach and Feta pizza for dinner tonight.

- Spending my time with these two and getting to kiss these little cheeks as much as I want.

All in all, a pretty good day.

Here's picture Wednesday. Little Finn, 6 weeks old!

Week 5

Picture Wednesday, Finn at 5 weeks old.

We captured one of his funny little grins today.

Never looks as cute in a picture but I think my little baby's smiles are so beautiful. I'll work pretty hard making a myself look completely silly just to get a goofy little grin from my babe.

This week Finn is suddenly not a newborn anymore. I really don't love it and I love it so much at the very same time. Suddenly he's this darling, big, squishy baby instead of a tiny, fragile one. What happened and how did I miss it?

This week's been a rough one for me health-wise. I've had a pretty nasty migraine since just after Finn was born and this week it's gotten worse. And I'm fed up. I finally went to the doctor last week, got some meds that didn't work for me. I tried a bunch of other things too. Basically it's a stressful time, I'm not getting much sleep, and my hormones are out of whack. I suppose, for me, that equals a constant headache. Awesome. Before this week I just hoped that it would go away eventually. But now I'm tired of it. I want to exercise, play hard with my little boy, clean up around my house but everything just hurts too much. I'm ornery that I'm missing so much time with my rapidly sprouting kids, and our rapidly disappearing time in this house, and with the people here because I'm not feeling well.

My poor honey has been a trooper. He even stayed home from work today and helped get the house ready to list. He did a ton of cleaning, straightening, and yard work all day and then the Realtor came to take pictures. And now, our house is on the market. My beautiful house that I thought we'd live in for much, much longer than 10 months, is on the market again. It's cleaner and neater than it's looked since we've lived here and now that it looks fantastic, we're out of here. Oh well, that's life. I can mourn the loss of my lovely home, but it won't do any good so I'm trying not to get too upset about it. As my dad said once when I told him how I felt about my house, "Your house doesn't have any feelings for you. It doesn't care who lives in it!" True dad. On to the next, I suppose.

My doctor's calling in a new prescription tonight for my headache. I'm sure I'll find something to help soon. A blessing I was given recently said I would, so I'm sure I will. Let's hope for a better next week!

Picture Wednesday

This week's picture is a bit late due to some computer issues, but here it is! Finn at four weeks old.

Had to throw a crying picture in there too because I still think he's darling even when he's ticked. As you can see he's wasting no time increasing his cheek and chin surface area in order to give us more to kiss. he's very thoughtful that way.

This week he's started giving us just a few little smiles. Tate got one yesterday for the first time and his response was, "Mom, I think that means he loves me!" Yep, I'm positive that's what it means, Tate.

Finn is giving us a bit of a run for our money sleep-wise. Sometimes he'll sleep for 3 hours in between feedings at night. Sometimes he'll take a while to go back to sleep after a feeding. Sometimes he'll wake up an hour early for a feeding. But he's otherwise a wonderful baby.

Glenn was in Denver for 3 days this week for work and we all survived around here. It was much harder without any help in the evenings or at night, but we survived. Tate missed his daddy a lot. A couple times he woke up from his nap and asked for Daddy. One evening at dinner he said, "I hear something. Someone's coming! Is it Daddy?!" No buddy, sorry. Remember, Daddy's in Denver on a trip. "I think I want to go to Denver too." Yeah, wherever Daddy is must be much more fun, right?

We're very glad he's back and won't be leaving us again before we move.

This guy...

is just plain awesome.

Well, they're both awesome, but right now I'm referring to the older of the two guys. My sweetheart, my boys' daddy, the geologist, the athlete, and all around awesomeness personified.

We are very blessed that Glenn has a GREAT job right now. And in addition to that, he happens to love his job. And even better, his job happens to love him back. It's basically a dream situation in the current economy.

Glenn had a very flattering review a couple months ago in which his boss told him that he refers to Glenn as "the easy button". He trusts that he can send Glenn into any situation and Glenn will do an awesome job with very little supervision required. He's also great with people. He makes them feel comfortable, heard, and valued and it's a skill that a lot of science-minded people don't necessarily possess. So when his supervisor started to plan for some re-structuring in the company and had to choose a few people to bring with him to work in the Denver office, he chose Glenn.

Less than 3 weeks before Finn was born Glenn got a phone call wondering, "Would you consider moving to Denver?" Less than a week before Finn was born we got the official offer, considered it, and decided it was a good move for our family. So, there you have it. We're off to Denver in a few weeks. The timing is not ideal. We just had a baby. We just bought a house and will have been in it for less than a year when we hit the road. But we've always thought, of all the places we could live where Glenn could do his work, Denver is the place we hoped to end up. We're getting there much sooner than we expected, but there's nothing wrong with that!

Because the timing has been less than ideal, I haven't been able to really wrap my head around it. There was a new baby and then there was some recovery and adjustments to figure out and I really didn't want to talk or think about it for a while. I'm starting to get excited about it now. It's a lot to deal with at once, but it will mean great things for our family so we'll figure it out. Glenn's company is amazing and are taking really good care of us. The move is going to be relatively pain free, which is exactly the type of move I can handle right now.

I'll have to devote an entirely other post to my feelings about moving, but for now, I just want to record how proud I am of my sweetheart. He's amazing at what he does, takes great care of the boys and I, and I love him to pieces. Here's to another great adventure! Yee-haw!

Christmas 2011

Christmas this year was a blur. It came and went so fast and I'm still reeling from its' passing and sad that it's over. I'm not sure how much Tate actually "got" this year about Santa Claus, but he certainly understood more than last year. We did a little Christmas story advent and opened a new book each night for our bed time story. He loved hearing all the new stories and I think they helped him understand Christmas more than anything else we did.

Christmas Eve we made Christmas cookies for Santa and left carrots for the reindeer. It was all so much fun.

Christmas morning he slept in until 9:30. It was awesome. It would have been more awesome if Finn had slept in too...but awesome none the less.

He ran right to his new marble ramp and started playing.

Eventually he got to his stocking which held the greatest treasures of the day: fun new cars. He got a bunch of new little cars that fit on his train table track. A new tiny dump truck, cement truck, and steam roller and such and we could have just stopped there. He could have played all day with those and not opened another thing.

Eventually we got him to open some of his other presents. A trumpet from Nanna. A new drum, which could only be played while marching of course.

We even had a little parade at one point, marching behind Tate around the house. Santa also brought Tate a big wheel bike. He's still figuring out how to ride and steer it.

Tate was absolutely spoiled beyond belief by his family from afar. Lots of new movies, an awesome remote control car (which he spent a good part of the day chasing around our house in circles), a cool Thomas flashlight, darling new clothes. It was incredible.

It was hard being so far away from family on Christmas this year. It was a bit lonely, especially in my sleep-deprived, hyper-emotional, four days postpartum state. We kept it pretty low-key. We got on skype with my family and called some of Glenn's. We spent most of the day watching Tate go from new toy to new toy and just having an absolute blast.

He was so happy and so entertained by all his new things and it was fun to watch him be so excited all day. We couldn't even get him to finish opening all his presents so a few of them went back in the closet for his birthday.

This was a Christmas we'll never forget, that's for sure. I can only imagine that next year will be even more fun with two littles and Tate a bit older. Christmas might be my favorite day to be a parent. It was awesome to watch Tate enjoy all the magic.

Battered boy and Week 3

Nanna is gone one day and look what happens around here.

Poor kiddo. First he was chasing a balloon around the living room, tripped over his new tricycle and smacked his forehead into the sharp edge of the entertainment center. Luckily it didn't split open. Just made a big dent which turned into a big bump.

Then he was playing hide and seek with Daddy and ran into the dark closet and smacked into the laundry basket with his eye. See Nanna, you shouldn't have left.

Little Finn, on the other hand, has survived 3 weeks with us relatively unscathed. Three weeks. That blows my mind. Thus far he's a very good little baby. He goes 3 hours between feedings, even at night...which will hopefully stretch out a bit soon. He has much more awake and alert time than I remember Tate having at this age. He spends a lot of time with his little eyes wide open and looking around. He knows our voices and especially loves Glenn's and Tate's. His little eyes open big and he looks around and tries to find them whenever he hears them. It's sweet.

Here's the little man, three weeks old.