Random Things Worth Noting

Anna does not like tags. She actually lives with them well on her own clothing where they are not visible to her. It's not exactly about comfort. It seems to be about aesthetics. Her dolls, stuffed animals, doll clothes - almost all of them have been operated on with my scissors so as to be free of any unsightly tags.

Lately the post-dinner ritual includes Anna and Blake rough-housing before bath. This includes dancing and racing or flying around the "track" from our kitchen to foyer to family room and back. It also recently includes Anna playing bumble bee and 'stinging' Blake with her butt, Blake falling to the ground in a blithering heap, and Anna returning to hug and kiss his stung body part. She's quick to sting him again.

Anna has been eating lettuce, spinach, and kale like it's candy. I'm a little weary of saying these words out loud - I don't want it to stop. She asks for second helpings of these vegetables almost every time we eat them, loaded of course with the most expensive aged balsamic vinegar around.

Last week Anna was obsessed with the old "new" animal carrier toy we found. More than a year ago Blake's supervisor invited us over, and we were gifted a little animal cage. Anna's little blue dog, the one Mo D found that is a replica of her big blue dog, needed a crate like Riley's. When we pulled it out of hiding, she spent DAYS playing with Ocho, the little blue dog. She filled the crate with handfuls of toys, took them out, put them back in, and took them out again more times than I could count. She was ecstatic about this.

While Anna still loves diapering her dolls, she's been more and more focused on building and designing. She builds with her legos, she makes boxes and homes out of her magna-tiles for her plastic bugs and lego animals and stickers, she creates intricate designs with her pop beads. I often find surprises waiting for me in magnetic pyramids and cubes that are laying around.

Before I fall asleep at night, before I even open my book to read, I've been in the habit of spending at least a few minutes browsing the latest celebrity news on my iPhone People app. Everyday. I usually skip Facebook, I don't have a Twitter account, I'm just dabbling on Pinterest. The People app gets most of my attention. Not exactly sure what this says about me.

I'm fourteen weeks pregnant tomorrow. Outside of the craziness of the last week or so, and the exhaustion that I still feel, I haven't been very focused on the pregnancy. I kinda even feel a little guilty about it, the lack of attention given to the little one growing inside me, that is. It's definitely good in a way, though. With Anna, I was a typical first time pregnant mom, obsessed with all the details. This time, I've done little to no reading or reminding myself of the 'shoulds' (which creates less anxiety), and I have yet to think about the nursery or things I'll need to buy this time around. I'm focused mostly on the day-to-day, staying busy with Anna and with life. I can see how a second child will be easier, with respect to worrying less about their fragility and how you care for them as a newborn. I can see how a second child is harder, though, too. The fatigue of raising one and housing a developing new one in my body is just a preview.

Speaking of this, I think the laziness Blake and I've been tending towards must be our way of stocking up while we still have the freedom. Neither of us are too motivated to do much of anything after Anna goes to bed...at 7pm! The kitchen usually gets cleaned to some degree by Blake if I cooked. They toys do not get picked up regularly. The mail is mostly ignored. The non-emergency items on the To Do list get moved from one day to the next to the next. The tools used for hanging pictures two weeks ago are still sitting on the chair. On another chair are the remnants of my reframing project. The top of the garbage can that's been blowing around in our yard? It's found a permanent place in the grass behind the deck. This is NOT my preferred way of keeping house. The cleaning people come tomorrow, though, so if you want to visit, come soon.

Somehow it's escaped this blog that we finally decided on a preschool for Anna next year. It was, for me, an agonizing decision. There's no "right" answer, but oh, I wished for one. In the end, the pros outweighed the cons (like the drive time and the lack of emphasis on time outside, which I figure Anna gets plenty of at home). And, ultimately, none of the other options FELT as right as this one. We're thrilled in so many ways about the school she'll be attending. She's actually pretty excited, too. The classroom even has a pet guinea pig, Professor, which was a major draw for her. The 25-minute drive though! When my pregnancy insomnia is in full swing as it was last week, I start questioning the logistics of afternoon (11:55am) drop off and (3:00pm) pick up with naps for a six or nine month old.