Toddler + holidays = busy, busy!

One of our neighbors down the street told me (twice) of a study he obviously found interesting. As the months and year have sped by, his comments have resonated with me too. Apparently researchers asked a room full of people of different ages to raise their hand when they thought a minute had passed. Older people raised their hands faster than younger people. Researchers concluded that time truly does seem to pass faster the older we get. Remember when waiting fifteen minutes seemed like an eternity? When you were certain the weekend would never come? When did I pass from that to this? How is it that I have to remind myself what month it is, let alone the day of the week? Does having a full life mean that life slips through my fingers faster? Ahhh, I digress. Always the verbose blogger, I meant merely to say we've been busy around here. Sometimes busy racing and chasing my big boy, sometimes busy traveling to see family, celebrating Thanksgiving, birthdays, and gearing up for our little version of Christmas. I will certainly not do justice to all the big days you have had since I last wrote, but if I don't write something now, I may miss writing it at all.

Here are the highlights of our last two weeks:

1) Thanksgiving - We were glad to be able to meet Grandpa, Lah-oo and Aunt Lizard at a lake house just a few hours away. After the great success of our beach trip, your Dad and I wondered what exactly to expect from this trip. We had learned that the key was to not expect much. And so we set our expectations low, and you met them mostly, exceeded them some. We were so happy to see family, get away to a quiet place and just have time together. It is harder now to travel with you than to have you at home, but so helpful to have extra helpers around. You seemed to adapt better to your new surroundings this time. Don't get me wrong, you still didn't nap well, and were extra high maintenance at times as a result, but we're getting accustomed to that. You also warmed up really well to these family members you had no way to remember. We were joined on Thanksgiving day by Great Uncle Louis. He's probably the first person you've met with a big, gravely voice and a beard. You handled meeting him like a champ...as long as mommy was around!

We spent a week away, and most of our days were just like our days at home. You enjoyed having Grandpa, Lah-oo and Aunt Lizard to respond to your every whimper, entertain you (and us!) with their songs and silliness, and pick you up all the time. Grandpa played his guitar most days and was brave enough to let you try. Several mornings, the two of you played the guitar together which I thought was very sweet.

The only thing you enjoyed about Grandpa more than his guitar was his glasses. Unfortunately, you found those with your grubby post-Thanksgiving dinner hands. I wonder what chisel Grandpa found to restore his lenses.

pointing to Grandpa's glasses...

trying to fish them out of his pocket

Speaking of Thanksgiving dinner...the family ate at a time that would have been your snack time. You ate more junk at that "snack" than you've ever eaten before. Your dinner was green beans, sweet potato casserole, broccoli and rice casserole, macaroni and cheese, cranberry relish, and a yeast roll. The yeast roll must have been very special as you ate it at least three times. Each time it got stuck on the roof of your mouth, you'd peel it off, put it in your bowl, then eat it again. Yummm! I let you have a bite of pumpkin pie and Lah-oo's amazing homemade apple pie and vanilla ice cream for dessert. You loved the pies, but made a face with the ice cream. It was too cold for your liking, I think.

Grandpa and Lah-oo were kind enough to let us go visit our good friends in a nearby town. It had been over a year since we'd seen them and it was so good to catch up a bit. It was even better to know you were such good (and free) hands while we were gone.

Our other big event for the week was a hike on our last day. It was our only group outing during our stay. It was partly sunny and about 50 degrees. We all bundled up and traveled to a local park with a trail along the lake's edge. You rode on my back int he Ergo for a roughly 3 mile, hour plus jaunt. The first three quarters of the hike were great fun. We talked about the trees, sang, shared stories, and helped each other stay upright in spite of the slippery leaves and hidden tree roots. The last 20 minutes were nearing dark, your supper time, and it was getting colder. It was a little dicey for all of us. I ran and bounced along the hilly terrain to entertain you. It was and ambitious distance for our first hike and you did really well.

All-in-all we had a good trip. We had been eager to get away for our vacation, and we were eager to return home at the end of the week. Thanks Grandpa, Lah-oo, and Aunt Lizard for sharing your time with us! We loved seeing you and hope to do it again soon.

2) My Birthday- So my 35th birthday was yesterday. I hesitated to write about that on this blog because I'm not sure it's relevant. I started my day with a 10k race through a local nature park. A good friend was kind enough to start the race with me, and my mom, DH, and LO came out for the finish. I'm not sure I would have even signed up for the race without their support. My goal was just to finish, and I was pleased to have run the whole thing. It felt good to start my 35th birthday that way. I also felt less guilty later when it came to eating cake! DH invited a neighbor friend over in the after noon and we opened a few gifts and had a yummy lemon cake DH had made just for me. Grams and Gramps came for the weekend, so DH and I were able to go out for dinner last night without having to think about our sitter bill at the end of the night!

Thanks to all my friends and family who sent me birthday wishes and gifts. I felt very loved.

3) It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas- Okay, so it's only looking a little like Christmas. We took advantage of Grams and Gramps being here to go get LO's first tree! I don't know how other people keep their little ones from hurting themselves on the tree, but our solution was to put it on a table in our sunroom. We took the trip this morning to the tree farm. When we told them we only had room for a three or four foot tree because it had to sit on a table, they smiled knowingly and directed us to the very sad looking section of the farm where the too-little-to-sell-this-year trees were growing. It was hard for DH and me to buy such a little tree, but I think it is better to have a small one than to have to keep LO from eating, pulling up on, taking ornaments off of, or otherwise attacking it. LO, by the way, did not get the memo outlining how to smile for the "we found our tree" picture. We look forward to having a bigger tree in future years, but, for now we think Charlie Brown would be proud of ours, and we are too.