dec 25

just because

just because there needs to be more max in the world. these 2 boys looking this cute should brighten more than just my day.

really quite lucky indeed

I am thankful for Derek.
he is the kind of dad that takes his daughter to serve dinner at the senior citizens center on Thanksgiving, reads princess books at bedtime & makes the effort to make max's peanut butter graham cracker snack just the way he likes it with one corner of the cracker left empty so he has a clean place to hold it. he is the kind of husband that leaves me with an emptied dishwasher in the morning, smiles when I decide to paint another wall or rearrange 17 pieces of furniture late at night & sends me on my merry little way when a sister suggests a late night movie.



I am thankful for Lily.
she is great. she is just such a great human. she loves giving her earned money away to people that need it. she loves writing letters that tell how much she loves people. she is the big sister every little boy should dream of having. she makes up fake homework for herself because she loves reading and writing and learning and wants to be an author, like today. i've heard from her (boy) friend that she is a pro at playing imagine and smart and cool at talking. her teacher said that the class was coming up with all the different ways to add 2 numbers to 10 and Lily was the only one that came up with writing all the numbers 0 to 10 in a list and then all the numbers 10 to 0 to add to them and so she got to explain it to the class. whenever the f a m i l y song comes on tv she always always comes and finds me so we can do the dance where we spread out (even if you're far away) and then run together and hug (or if I see you every day).



I am thankful for Max.

I mean look at him. even with the two-year-old-ness and the fits and the biting (oh, max) and the late afternoon accidental naps that results in more fits...he is truly a joy. before I was a momma I really never thought I'd have a boy and I really never knew what a fantastic thing it was. well blessing upon blessing. thank you for max. he is my cuddlebird. we are rarely not within arms reach of eachother when we are both home during the day. we build trains and destroy cities and paint dinosaurs and glue buttons and throw leaves and dance to the monster song and the tron song and watch bubble guppies. I mostly love how instead of "another" he uses the word "else". want an else show or an else snack because you're don't hungry cheese.

oh but there's more.

I am thankful for the exact friends that my children have. of course they are forming who they are at this point in their lives. we talk about each of them in our bedtime stores (often driving multicolored trains or running from silly monsters). though often through trail and error or learning by mistakes....they teach us about kindness and forgiveness and taking turns and compromise and patience and creativity and fun and not biting.

I'm thankful for the exact friends that I have. that they do awesome things with their talents that I could never do. and they are always 100% up for any adventure (kids in tow) that will possibly involve good-natured trespassing or driving straight down mountains or lots and lots of peanut butter cups because someone in the back seat just won't stop screaming or the worst display of yoga you've ever seen (I don't think you're supposed to fall over as much as I do ha ha). friends that serve and serve and serve and keep making those amazing chicken croissants for baby showers or waking up at 6 am with me to pass out vegetables or watch my own children and treat them as they do their own.

I am thankful for my sisters. and that I'm the old almost-30-year-old one but I still get to go to dumb telepathic werewolf movies with them at midnight and give them ridiculous princess braids. and when I have boy/dating/life/college advice they listen and actually make it seem like they're buying it so I must know what I'm talking about. and I'm thankful for the cousin across the street that might just as well be the bonus sister. and I'm thankful that all of these people just love love love on my children and spend oodles of time showing them that they do and being their nannies. thankful that grandma will play save-the-airplane and watch the sodor bridge crumble for the 17th time and not mind the fruit rollup fingerprints all over her ipad. and grandpa will laugh at lily's knock knock jokes and perfect her sourdough pancake cooking skills with her every sunday.

I'm also thankful for lots of other dumb stuff. but I think that's a good place to end.

lily wants a sister

but she's not getting it. nor a brother. sorry, babe. your parents are content for the time being.

in the mean time, how about helping me babysit one of the cutest humans on the planet?

what's that? you want them in black+white? because she's just so adorable and you can't decide what would look fabulous?

oh dear. they both do, huh?

Hogwarts

hum the song to yourself while you look through alllll these pictures, will ya? then maybe just maybe it will be like you were there.

p.s. did you know lavender's my sister and parvati's our cousin?

**should definitely add that this was not created by me. yep, it is COMPLETELY amazing. my friend's family has been putting it on for like 10 years. we are just lucky enough to have them as friends! my sister and cousin joined for the first time this year. I just went as a Daily Prophet photographer :)

link to the real shots (to download). that is, if you can't just magic them on to your hard drive but you want to.

13.8 GB

My October 2011 folder of photos had 13.8 GB. That's insanity.

No wonder my house is trashed.

Here are a few of them:

preschool make-up day

so this year max is in preschool. home-schooled preschool co-op. it's awesome. once a friend blogged about the same thing having the theme each time be a different color (hi, sam) so I copied her and that's awesome too.

all our little friends are 3-year-olds or almost 3-year olds. so counting this year they all have 2 or 3 years of preschool before kindergarten (there's a 5-year-old brother in the pics for today). so I'm sure if we keep it up the theme will change from mastering colors to actual letters and shapes and things but we've got time.

max has been loving it. we get dressed in the color of the day. he talks about all his buddies ALL the time. and what their favorite color is. they are all characters in our made-up bedtime stories. it was a good reason to buy a tiny adorable backpack. it's just awesome.

this day though, a mom was sick. so to improvise (and thus not disappoint the excited kids) the rest of us pulled together a last minute plan and went for it.

awesome.

everything was fun. perfect weather. perfect overcast lighting even. perfect leaf pile. just sad not everyone could play with us that day!

the girl pictures at the end are when I got out a huge umbrella and we decided to hide from the leaf-throwing-crazies.