Just Pictures

Summer fun has continued around these parts - more camping, playground, playdates, ducky tour, neighborhood fair, jazz in the park, pool and walks around the neighborhood. To keep you occupied until I can put together a more newsy update, I'm going to share my two favorite pictures that R has taken this week.

9 days of Summer

This is Todd, asleep in the carrier on my back at the end of our first family trip to Kennywood. (Thank you pikkolo carrier, for helping us avoid taking the stroller to the amusement park. ;-)

Last week, R and the kids were home for vacation, and we packed a WHOLE lot of summer into that one week. Todd's expression above is pretty much how I felt when the week was over. Completely and totally exhausted. :-)

The week included camping, hiking, beach time, eating campfire food, a family 4th of July picnic, lake and pool swimming, Cars 2 (Todd's first movie theater experience, Heather's second), the spray park, the zoo, puddle jumping, a day at Kennywood amusement park and a cookout birthday party with bubbles. Whew.

Every indication is that the kids had a great time all week. They got to know some of their cousins better while we were camping and could have spent all of their time at the campground playing at the beach & the lake if we would have let them. It was hard with so many activities to keep up the usual routines and there were lots of car naps, and some bedtime issues. But the kids seemed to deal with the unpredictability well and the only "problem" was some boundary testing near the end of our break. Other than some slow mornings, the return to daycare and our normal routine has not been hard and both kids were eager to join their friends after drop-off this morning.

Our day at Kennywood was a lot of fun. Heather was ready to ride anything that she was tall enough to go on and was enthusiastic in Kiddieland. Todd was a little more hesitant at first, especially on the rides where he was supposed to sit solo. So we switched to the rides where kids and parents can ride together, and by the evening he was enthusiastically going on the kid only rides with Heather.

Heather and Daddy also rode on the Pittsburgh Plunge and the Jack Rabbit together while Todd and I found other ways to entertain himself. We may need to find another adult to take with us next year so that Todd has a riding partner for the rides outside of Kiddieland as well. This mama only rides the spinny rides and not anything that goes up and down. :-)

We look forward to more summer activities, but this past week was the epitomy of summer fun!

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Bedtime stories in the tent:


First walk on the beach:

Playing at the Glendale Lake beach:


In the Mole Rat tunnel climber at the zoo:


Riding the Kiddieland version of The Whip:

First Baseball Game

Here is an effort to document one of the fun activities from this summer. Before my layoff I was thinking about taking Heather to a Sunday afternoon Pirates game while Todd was home napping. After the layoff, I was looking at a Thursday afternoon game in September...and then once the mother of one of Heather's friends mentioned the same game it became a done deal.

Despite having worn several Reds outfits as an infant, the influence of her daycare teachers has caused Heather to think that she wants to be a Pirates fan. Luckily, for her baseball spirit, she has no idea how lousy the team has been for the past 17 years or even the fact that they lost the day we went to a game. I hope that next year I can pick a game that they win, just so she can experience the excitement of the home crowd cheering for the home team. But she still seemed to have a very good time and seemed to listen as I yammered on about the rules of the game. I will be interested to see if she retains any of it for the beginning of the baseball season in 2011.

We had a nice day and I look forward to taking both kids to a game next year!

The view from our seats. (Someone gave us a buy one, get one free coupon so we sat closer than we had planned to.)

Practicing her pirate face...

Enjoying the game with her new parrot.

What do you mean the other team scored?
Checking out the view from home plate.


Seeing more of the stadium with Sebastian.

Enjoying the food at the game.

Looking at the river before we leave.

Did I say I was ready to leave yet?

Thankful

Despite how quiet it has been here, I have been thinking about this writing space a lot. Thinking about what I'd like to be writing here and when to make dedicated blog time in my life. In some ways, posting quick thoughts to facebook has taken the place of some of my blog fodder *and* I just signed up for twitter...so I am trying to sort out what belongs where in my tiny, itty bitty corner of the social media 'verse.

My mind keeps coming back to a post that starting forming the week of Thanksgiving. Not wanting to be cliche (ha!), I have procrastinated to the point that it is more of a holiday season post than a Thanksgiving one.

I am incredibly lucky and incredibly thankful.

It feels a bit odd to say that while I am unemployed with few job prospects, but in some ways my situation is making it more obvious.

I'm thankful that I have choices. That I can choose to work and send my kids to an amazing daycare center/preschool.

I'm thankful that we're doing okay despite my unemployed status. Sure, we have to have much more frequent chats to review the finances and reign in our spending as much as possible. But we are lucky not to be in any immediate financial danger or living from paycheck to paycheck.

I'm thankful for our house and our stuff. Other than some new clothes, I don't find myself wanting a whole lot for Christmas. I'm excited for the things that the kids are going to get and spending the time with family, but I'm not feeling strongly about things that I want. I suppose our situation is making me happy with what we have, and if anything I am using some of my "free time" to pure some things. It isn't that I need our house to be perfectly clean and organized all of the time, but I would like to feel like everything has a place so that cleaning up doesn't involve moving piles from one room to another. :-)

I'm thankful for our health. Even with the string of illnesses that Todd has processed over the past few months, he has never been severely ill and mostly not much more than cranky and restless. And each of these periods has made me thankful for my ability to nurse him. Especially during his tummy bug when the nurse told me that my milk was the best possible thing for him. Proud mommy moment.

I'm thankful for my friends. It is hard to put into words how lucky I have been in the friend department. There are times that it feels hard to live up to how lucky I am to have them, but I do my best.

I'm thankful for the summer we had. Looking back at our pictures makes it clear to me that we took full advantage of lots of outdoor activities and had a lot of fun.

Three weeks in a hurry

I just really can't do justice to the past three weeks in a long, picture-heavy post...especially because Todd has been sleeping while I ate lunch and moved laundry around and he could wake up every minute. So you'll have to settle for relatively recent pictures of each kid and let me try to sum it up...

The past few weeks have mostly been really nice with the occassional hint of miserably tired and overwhelmed with housework. The nice weather has afforded two trips to the zoo (one with Nana & Bapa and one as a family of four), many trips to the playground, the neighborhood yard sale (see bike above, walks around the neighborhood, a couple of trips to the neighborhood city pool, dinners on the porch, planting of flowers and playing in the backyard. We've also had some rain and one really impressive storm. (We are fortunate to live at a higher elevation, but some residents of our area were really hit hard and lost significant property - our thoughts are with them.)

We've spent time with the grandparents and we're trying to navigate life with two kids. A life where one of these kids wants to nurse often and the other can be sweet as pie one minute & defiantly saying "no" the next. I think we're doing well, but I'm trying to examine our house, our habits and our lifestyle to find anything that could make things easier when I return to work. I'm trying to clean up and clean out (see hint of overwhelmed by housework above), and my mom is going to come for a week to take care of Todd whenever he isn't nursing so that I can get as much done as possible. I've also been stealing moments here and there to put his room together, since his furniture finally came during the past two weeks. The room needs some plaster patching and could use some paint, but its mostly occupiable now...by both of us.

The current balancing act also invoves trying to get enough sleep to function well, to get out to enjoy the nice weather, to have a few more playdates and to have fun with Heather when she's home. Oh, and one day this week I'm going to keep her home and test out a full day alone with two kids. I'm assuming I'm not going to get any chores done that day. ;-)

Yesterday (I think) we had a nice Father's Day. The four of us took the Father's Day brunch cruise on the Gateway Clipper. For those of you not in Pittsburgh, the ship cruises the three rivers of Pittsburgh in and around the area where they meet. It's a great view of downtown, the stadiums, the bridges and of Pittsburgh in general. Heather had been asking to take a boat ride, and the weather was great. She wasn't thrilled about posing for pictures, but overall she seemed to like it. Todd was less obvious in his feelings about the trip. Just like our zoo visits, he spent the whole time sleeping or nursing, so it is hard to judge his thoughts.

Todd's beginning to stir, so just a few short words on the knit/crochet front and I'm out of here. First, Todd's blanket is done - yay! I blocked and washed it this weekend, so now it just needs a photo shoot. It's done just in time for the hot weather so he can still be swaddled without sweltering in a blanket. Second, I've started a baby gift for a friend. I've gotten the blanket done and this gift started by finding time when I can let Todd sleep on my chest while I work. Add this in to the balance equation.

Other than that, my three sweaters in progress are calling to me. I can try Samus on my post-partum body to measure for the zipper. The pieces of Bristow are ready to be blocked so it can be sewn together. And I want to put the alpaca vest on waste yarn so I can try it on and make sure my gauge and measurements will actually fit me. There are also lots of squares for Babette that need to have their ends woven in before I do more crocheting. Hopefully my tension hasn't changed too much since I started the think last year.

ETA: Oh, and I've watched the second season of Family Ties on DVD and I'm on the 3rd season of The West Wing (I have the 1st season and borrowed the rest from my parents. It's interesting to watch it back from the beginning). I'm watching whenever Todd nurses and I'm feeling less lazy & gluttonous when I don't just have random TV shows on in the background all day long...