"S"

Comment and I'll give you a letter; then you have to list ten things you LOVE that begin with that letter. Afterward, post this in your journal and give out some letters of your own. My sister gave me the letter "S":

Saturdays
Sons (my two boys!)
Sleeping In
Swimming
Strawberries
Sushi
Super Target (does that count? hahahha)
Sunset
Sisters
Snow Sledding (but not walking back up the hill)

Do I Need A Bigger House???

Here is a question that I had to ask myself recently when I was daydreaming of a bigger house, "Do I need a bigger house with more bedrooms when everyone ends up in my room by morning?" Hahahah...It's true...When Walt goes to work, he leaves me with all the space in the world to sleep on in that king sized bed. I can sleep sideways, diagonal, making snow angels... Sounds comfy right? But then why do I get up anywhere between 5 and 6am to bring Beckham to my room when he stirs or welcome Livingston at 7 or 8am when he wakes up and I hear the tapping of his feet from his room to mine? Purely because I love to have them there with me. I may complain about being the uncomfortable and trapped sandwich meat between the two slices of bread, but secretly I wouldn't trade it for the world. What do we do when Daddy's home and everyone joins in the morning ritual? We just shift over.

It's All Relative

This past week I've been running around between the start of school for Livingston and the welcome visitation of family from out of town. We got to all get together and compare our children's growth charts and sit in amazement wondering how the kids got so big, as well as meet (and show off!) the newest members to our expanding brood, eat good food and just hang out. The photo above is of our very own Beckham and his little cousin Hannah, who was born approximately two and a half months apart. We were doing a quick photo shoot of Hannah and both babies were in such a good mood, we decided to put them together for pictures. We're really sad that Hannah and her mommy, Wendy (who is my sister-in-law and one of my very close friends) have to travel back home all the way across the country tomorrow, but are happy that they get to see daddy, who has been missing them for a week while they've been gone. I love the top picture, but the one above totally cracks me up...it's like they're talking about something amazing... could it be about which diaper holds up the best? Could it be the debate over bottle feeding and breastfeeding? Or who has the best snuggly blanket??? I bet they never tell us.

4 Months and One Week

Today Beckham and I went to the doctor's for his 4 month check-up. We sat in the waiting room, for about an hour and some change watching "The View" patiently until we were called. Immediately, our favorite nurse D greeted us warmly with her caring smile and radiant energy as I disrobed the little guy to get his stats. Naked and wiggly, he measured out to be 25 inches long (50th percentile) and a whopping 17 lbs (90th percentile). Boy, was I surprised! I didn't realize he weighed so much because two months ago he was only 12 lbs. My two kids definitely seem to have a different growing pattern this first year. Livingston was on the smaller side in his first year and didn't reach the 50th percentile until he was around a year old. I call Beckham my Caucasian baby and Livingston my Asian baby. Hahahah... Doctor N said that he was very healthy and did a fantastic job tracking his light scope in all directions and did very well on his tummy, everything looks great! Yey!

Unfortunately, he needed his shots so he received two shots, one in each thigh. Oh my poor little guy!!! But I was a good mommy and remembered to give him his Tylenol beforehand so that it would start working to ease his little thigh-guys.

"Mommy, I do good job"

On the eve of Livingston's big first day of kindergarten, I decided to get the video camera and tape ready. But upon figuring out which tape was which, I realized that I needed to label several videos that I had not previously. Walt and I watched a few of them together, footage that we had forgotten that we had made, of special days and many moments that were just lucky enough to have gotten filmed. Here are some of my favorite memories that I got to watch again.

SAND EATER

It was Livingston's first time playing with sand on the beach, he kept wanting to eat it, so I had to put a pacifier in his mouth so that the sand wouldn't be munched on. He had his cute swim trunks on, hawaiian print, just like his dad. Little big man with the pacifier and turtle hat.

MY BIRTHDAY TORTE

It was my birthday and we were having an awesome dinner at my Ma's (my mommy) house. She was cooking up a storm and I was ready to eat! My sister, who was home from school, was so wonderful and baked me a birthday cake. Now, let me go ahead and say this, she is a fabulous baker so this incident was a rarity. Anyhow, she brings me the cake as everyone is singing happy birthday and I smile all goofy looking and was very pleased with it, other than wondering why it was so short. I blow out the candle...then cut into it, surprised at how incredibly dense it is and hard to get the knife to sink in. When I finally get the piece out, it looks really fancy, like a dark red two layered torte with delicious frosting. Unfortunately, when you bit into it, it was like how you would imagine flubber to taste. My sister and I laughed so hard (because we're easily humored with ourselves and are the first to laugh at our own mishaps) and agreed that there must have been something wrong with my mother's oven. To this day, even though she's made many delicious desserts and has NEVER made anything like the "rubber cake" again, the legend still lives on.

EASTER EGG HUNT

We had gone up to Pop's house for Easter dinner and an egg hunt for Livingston. One problem...it was raining outside. They ended up hiding the eggs indoors all over the living room and when they let him loose...he was a mad man! He was climbing and hunting under table cloths, it was adorable seeing him look in every nook and cranny for eggs. I think he found all of them!

CHRISTMAS TREE DECORATING

It was the first year we lived in our current home and Livingston was helping me decorate the tree. Until this footage, the videos that I had watched so far, he was too young to do more than babble. In the film I was showing him how to hang the ornaments up and I had given him a few to do by himself. After getting the ornaments hung, he steps back and looks at it and turns to me and says, "Mommy, I do good job." Needless to say, watching it now, my heart melted, I had forgotten how much I loved his broken dialect.

I can't wait to look back at our family videos in a few years and see how much both Livingston and Beckham have grown. I do this with our photo albums regularly, but for some reason, putting in the old tapes and playing them is sometimes tedious. In a few years, I may be blogging about this again. About all the memories that somehow, our minds forget but are forever captured on little black cassettes (which I need to soon transfer to DVD) to warm our hearts with, when we take the time as a family to look back and smile.