He can swim, ya'll

Andy can swim. Seriously. It's totally awesome, too. Turns out eight months of weekly swim lessons can actually lead to something.

We had a hard time getting into swimming. Andy didn't want his head under water at all, even in the bath, so swimming lessons were stress inducing there at the beginning. But we worked through it and the folks at the swim school are pretty amazing. I signed him up for swim team this summer and I've been a little nervous about it because they said kids needed to be able to swim 25 feet and I knew that 15 feet which he can swim didn't exactly add up to 25.

But then this Saturday, my sister and her kids and another friend came over and he somehow put all the pieces together and started swimming. It was amazing. The conditions have to be right, of course, he needs his goggles and he can't really take a breath during his stroke or anything, but he can confidently go from one side of the pool to the other and he's loving it. I'll admit I was nervous about getting a pool, but considering how much we used it this weekend and how hot it is in Dallas already, I think it was a good call.

Meg, however, still not swimming, but she thinks she can. So I've been making her wear a swim vest type thing so she floats. She'll probably be swimming on her own by the end of the summer and another session of swim school, but for now I've got to make her keep her head above water.

Ironwoman

We went to Houston this weekend to cheer on my sister Mary who was competing in a triathlon. I must say, wow, those folks were really damn hard. Houston was a terrible venue what with the 92 degree weather and 95 percent humidity. Apparently a lot of people had to drop out during the day due to dehydration. Mary was amazing. She got through the 2.6 mile swim in an hour and a half and the 112 mile bike ride in under eight hours. Then she started to run and she developed a foot injury that made it nearly impossible to keep moving on it. The diagnosis at the time was a stress fracture or a split tendon. She made it eight miles (!) on a broken foot before she finally stopped. WOW. That's some serious determination. I was so amazed and impressed with her and all the other athletes. They are amazing!

I must say, I was inspired. I would love to do a marathon, but I'm not sure that's in my cards. I may run a 5k or something soon though. That's about my speed.

The day before checking out the bike transition spot.

The night before dinner with Team Queso at Olive Garden. There were about 6 friends from Austin and then 6 family members that came to cheer her on. It was awesome.

Pre-race decorations on her door. We're very clever using post-it notes and Post-it flags.

We waited for Mary at the 90 mile marker on the bike route. It was long and sweaty waiting but amazing to watch everyone. We also got to talking to a lot of the other families and friends of participants. It was so neat seeing all the support, too.

Our spot on the turn before mile 90.

Mary at the bike-out transition spot.

Mary beginning the run.

This is at the end, a picture of her damaged feet. She'll find out this week what the damage is and whether she can train to compete in the Arizona Ironman this fall.

Ironwoman

This weekend I am off to see my sister compete in an Ironman triathalon. I am most impressed by this level of dedication considering thought of watching her run/bike/swim for 17 hours makes me tired much less the thought of actually running/biking/swimming for all that time. I don't care if she finishes the darn thing, but the thought that she's set such an impressive goal for herself and she's been working so hard to get there has me filled with all sorts of awe and inspiration. Go Mary!

My new toy

For Mother's Day, Bjorn (upon my advice), bought me a composter. I had seen my friend's and thought it was pretty darn cool. It also, sadly, was pretty darn expensive so it's going to be a combination Mother's Day/birthday present. It arrived today and we set it up. It's already churning some banana peels, coffee grounds and some orange rinds. You are also required to put in baking soda and saw dust pellets, you know, to help avert the smell. It's pretty cool although I hope it's not overly complicated to use. I like that I can put it in the garage so I don't have to traipse to the back of the yard (and of course, that I have a garage!)

Things in Virginia have been dramatic with two surgeries in two weeks for two members of Bjorn's immediate family. I am thankful to report that both seem to be on the mend.

Things here, however, have been quiet. Work is quiet at the moment (for me, not everyone--they're all busy with a system implementation which is probably why my life is quiet) and so it's weird to be in the house all alone during the day sometimes. I'm only technically working 25 hours a week, but I've always gone well above that and with the new blur of the home/home office, it's even easier to just log in and doing another hour while the kids watch the Backyardigans before bed. 

Fortunately, it's giving me an opportunity to reach out to some neighbors and meet others who work from home just for companionship in between conference calls. I do love my new set up, but I really miss my water cooler talk. It's also hard sometimes to feel part of a team when I'm off by myself. Of course, all this is just talk because in a few months, I am taking on a new responsibility and I know I'm going to be really busy.

I do love the freedom my new work from home set up affords. Like today, I picked both kids up at three and we played on the playground for an hour. Then we went to the library, made a craft and were home in time for a playdate. I love that my kids can do that now and we're not just pulling into the driveway at 6 p.m. like we used to. I love that we live in the kind of neighborhood where the kids can run over for an impromptu playdate.

Bjorn says I'm not very good at patting myself on the back and it's true. Sure, in the past year we have moved cross country, traveled with two small children to Australia, lived apart for three months, sold a house, bought a house, lived with my parents briefly, moved to a new town, started a child in public school, quit our jobs and got new ones, had my first mammogram and made a bunch of new friends, some of whom are awesome. So after all that, when things are quiet, I just don't know what to do with myself sometimes!

This and that

When we were looking at houses, Bjorn really wanted a pool. My problem with the pool was I was nervous the kids would get into it when I wasn't around and that shit just scares me. So we started only looking for houses that had a separate pool fence so that it was separate from the rest of the yard. That meant the kids could have a yard and still have a separate pool. The first house we put an offer on did have that already. Then that fell through and we fell in love with our house. It didn't have a separate pool fence, but it looked it did at one time. So we made a deal with ourselves that we would add that fence.

So we did! And it looks great. Now I can open the door to the backyard and send the kids out to play without having to supervise the pool area. We were also able to padlock the pool with a combination lock. I feel better already. Now we need to find some toys to put in the new fenced area.

This picture is evidence I have the coolest mom ever. We had tickets to see the supremely hilarious David Sedaris at SMU a few weeks ago. I stopped to pick up mom and we prepared drinks to put in our purses to have at intermission. She's just awesome. And so was the show.

Also awesome? These guys. The other night, we had a terrible thunderstorm so they both converged in our bed. I snuck out to watch the news about Bid Laden and came back to this picture. I think I love them more than ever. Plus, sleeping children are sometimes superior to awake ones that stand over me in the bathroom stall asking if I'm done yet over and over and over and over again.

Said thunderstorms produced a ton of rain. Our creek is a major artery during times of storms so Meggie and I went down to check it out. Check out her little fashion statement, too. Who doesn't wear a striped dress with striped pants of a different vintage with a raincoat to match?

Glasses

Andy got his first pair of glasses yesterday. He looked really cute. I'm glad I took a picture at Wal-Mart when we picked them up as they are already lost. Seriously, Internets, how is that even possible?

We have been retracing our steps to the Subway where we ate lunch, the couch store where we stopped to realize we should hold off to afford the better leather couch that we really want to the outdoor play place where we looked in vain for just a little bitty wooden playhouse to go in the backyard instead of the massive play structures they seem to sell. Nothing.

I am hopeful the furniture place will eventually find it tucked under something or the unfriendly lady at the play place will find them on one of her play structures (no answer from her today either because its Sunday or pouring down rain).

He looked pretty darn cute in his glasses, too. He's got an astigmatism, which isn't that big a deal, except one eye is stronger than the other and you need to balance those out with classes or run the risk the weaker eye will stop developing normally (apparently bad). Fortunately, on the advice of the opthamologist, the glasses we just a little over $100 so we can afford to get another pair if we have to. I may wait a week though and hope the others show up. I'm glad I didn't invite in the special lenses. I figured he wouldn't hold on to this first pair long. I had no idea it would be THIS short.

Egg drop soup

Andy's school had a really neat project last week. They were to take a raw egg and somehow make a 7 inch by 7 inch by 7 inch container to house it safely. The container would then be dropped off a ladder by a teacher to see if the egg survived. Bjorn and he worked on it and had several different cool designs. The one they finally settled on was a square box filled with fruit loops. They practiced by dropped it out the game room window into the driveway (downside, now he knows the game room windows can be opened).

I am happy to report that his egg survived. It was all pretty adorable. You could tell the girl containers because most of them were heavily decorated with colors and other appliques. Some designs were quite clever. The most common container was Tupperware followed by a box. Many kids violated the size rule, but hey, it's kindergarten and not a science project so no eliminations. Many of those didn't do any better.

Bjorn wanted to know how many survived and you really couldn't tell except some kids were crying (I presume their eggs broke) and on some, you could really hear the smack when they hit the ground so you just knew it didn't survive.

Kitties

Before Bjorn and I had been married a year, we got two adorable kittens that came to live with us in our rental townhouse in Alexandria. They were small and hyper. They made a ton of noise and climbed on all the curtains. But they were ours, an earlier decision in our marriage and we loved them. They were my babies before I had babies. Sadly for them, they became somewhat second class citizens when the kids arrived, but they still loved us and now there were more of us to love them.

I am sad to report that one of them, Coltrane, died last weekend. The whole thing is sort of surreal. She's just gone. She had been ill with a bladder infection a few weeks earlier, but since then, she'd put on weight and was becoming more adventurous again. Then she had an attack of some kind and died on the way to the emergency veterinary hospital. My sister Mary, the vet, says it's almost certainly unrelated. I will miss her.

When in Roam

When we moved it, I put a gate on Meg's door to keep her from getting up in the night falling down the stairs trying to come to our room. Eventually, we started opening the gate at night so she could wake up and go to the bathroom, or more likely, come to our room. So when I steam cleaned the carpets a few weeks ago, I took the gate off and put it in the attic. Now she is free to roam the house after I think I've put her to bed. I find I miss that gate, but she's going to have to grow up some time, I suppose.

This is her asleep in our bed. She'll sneak past us and I'll find her asleep there.

Lately, I find she's sneaking out after I tuck her in and I'll find her asleep in random spots. It almost looks like a crime scene.


Here she is asleep in between the kitchen and breakfast room.

 

Asleep in her room but on her chair wearing a leotard.



Shocker - asleep in her own bed.



Asleep next to Bjorn. So cute.



Here is a tease - she was faking being asleep which I didn't know until I took the picture. She then gleefully jumped up to see herself in my phone.



Coffee and other hazards

Last Monday after spending the weekend in Washington, D.C., for work, I eagerly began a conference call with a guy in Boston when I spilled coffee on my laptop computer. I didn't freak, it WAS an important call, so I just slowly dabbed up what I could and kept going. Afterward, I called my IT person who is the nicest, most nonjudgmental IT person I've ever met and explained what I had done. "Oh. Oh, my." That's how I knew I was screwed.

Per her advice, I unplugged the battery and all the keys, dried the board and waited. In the meantime, I went to Best Buy and bought a new computer.

I needed one anyway. My little Acer laptop wasn't really appropriate for every day work. I had bought it as a personal computer a couple of years ago, but converted it to full-time business use last year when we moved and I started consulting. Now that I've gotten a permanent gig working from home, I needed to upgrade to something bigger and better. The new computer is beautiful and gorgeous -- mostly the monitor, of course. It's huge. Bjorn convinced me to spend the extra $59 for the super big HD monitor which makes a difference. At first, it was almost too bright, but now I've sort of gotten used to it and I really love it!

So to bury the lead, I now have a permanent gig, working from home, traveling occasionally. It's a totally awesome set up doing a project I really like. The only downside of working from home is getting disconnected when I'm on my own all day so I've asked to be included in staff meetings and I'm making a point to stay in touch via phone instead of e-mail. The perk is I have no commute, except to take the kids to and from school really, which gives me a lot more time for the rest of my life. It's also incredibly flexible in terms of the kids. I am super excited that Andy can actually do swim club this summer. In prior years, I was always working so he could never really go. I do miss the energy that comes with an office though so I'm going to find some interesting coffee shops where people congregate just for the social aspect of getting out once in a while. I also found out a neighbor just took a job working from home three days a week so I will have a buddy on the block to become my work water cooler.

Fortunately, I've been able to get about 4/5 of the keyboard keys back on. Typing is a mess still as putting these keys back on is like rebuilding an antique clock -- lots of small pieces that have to be painstakingly put back together.

Milestone

Meg is no longer a baby. That's been true for some time now, but the signs are all over right now. Recently we moved her out of her Britax Roundabout car seat for a booster seat. I wasn't in any hurry particularly, but after she threw up last time due to strep, the smell was sort of imbedded in the straps and I realized I was just done. She loves her new seat. It's a Graco booster with a little pink. It's adorable.

There are other signs, too. The changing table and crib sheets are in the garage to give away. She is mostly only in diapers at night now so her diaper trash can is mostly unused. Her sippy cup to regular cup usage is about 80 percent. When properly motivated, she can pick out her own clothes and get dressed, often wearing the shoes on the right feet.

Now don't get me wrong, I am thrilled with her progress and that she's getting more interactive and interesting (and opinionated) by the day. I am thrilled that I will not be pregnant again or have another baby. But my baby is growing up and I'm not exactly sure how I feel about that.

Fashionist

My poor kids have inherited my fashion sense. Look at young Margaret wearing her faux Ugg boots with her swim suit. I offered her Crocs but she chose these instead. Meanwhile, I think I need to feed Andy more. He eats, I swear, but those ribs showing are a little disturbing.

Strep, again

Meggie Meg has a case of strep. I prefer it to some of the other options, like an evil cold that can't be treated, stomach flu or an ear infection but I'd rather be watching a new episode of Glee about now instead.

She had sort of a low grade blah yesterday and by last night, she was warm with fever, snoring like her father and generally feeling unhappy. That was all not great enough, but then she threw up a couple of times. Throughout the day, her fever came and went but she never quite seemed on the upswing. Tonight, naturally, was Andy's open house/math night at school starting at 5 so I never got her in to see a doctor. I decided that I'd take her to minute clinic for a strep test, only to get there too late to get on the wait list to see the nurse practitioner. I know, right? So we ended up at an Urgent Care down the street where we got the diagnosis.

That was all well and good. The doctor was nice, facility clean and the exam room had a TV (they all seem to here, it's nice). We were on our way back to CVS to fill the prescription when she started throwing up in the car. Then she threw up a couple more times in the parking lot. I must say, things to love about Texas. A lady in the parking lot came over to help me. She gave me a bunch of napkins and found a bag for me to put her clothes in. I didn't really need it, but how nice. Also nice? Bjorn met us as the door and promptly got to work cleaning the car and car seat. It really does take a village and I love it.

Honey badger don't care!

I must say, if all nature videos were this nicely narrated, I would watch it all the time. Hilarious.

Ranch trip

Jennifer and her baby. She's a regular Angelina Jolie.

Bjorn and Andy on the four wheeler. It was so. much. fun.

The Super Moon. On the clear night out in the country near Brownwood, it was pretty magnificent.

Dad and Andy after climbing the cliffs not far from the house. Andy absolutely loved climbing. Dad and I were cringing and giving him all sorts of advice and he just did it his way and it worked out.

Dad helping Andy shoot the .22. Andy declared that shooting guns with Pop was more fun than playing Wii. That's some seriously high praise from the six year old.

Bjorn mowed around the house and fence line, killing the stickers that are a real nemesis down there.

It was a little dusty down there. It was very dry, the river was low and there was a burn ban in effect so no outdoor fires or s'mores. This time.

Dad and Andy walking through the take out spot on the Colorado River. Normally, there's a river there and not a dry bed. We still had fun skipping rocks in parts that had water and chasing frogs.

Like I said, the four-wheeler was a ton of fun. The roads are still hard to find and in some cases, hogs have torn then up, so I couldn't go too fast, but it was still good fun to tool around on them. I usually had one kid with me which meant I was even more alert than usual.

We also found time to kayak upriver, spotlight animals (we saw seven deer the first night and two armadillos; five deer the second night), cruise around in the jeep, chase wild turkeys (we counted at least 10) and watch college basketball. It was a fun trip. Looking at the pictures, I'm reminded how much we did. No wonder I'm tired!

Reason #3948 for why I hate carpet

I really, really hate carpet. It's a pain in the neck to keep clean, especially this off-white carpet that adorns half my house. With moving in trauma to the carpet, the frequent cat throw up, regular child messes and Andy's recent bout of nose bleeds, it's time to get it cleaned. I haven't done this in ages so I started asking for quotes. So far, the lowest has been about $400 to clean just half the bedrooms, family rooms and hallway. And that's before I added on cleaning the back staircase at $2 a step. This is a necessity due Andy's nosebleed the other night where he left a trail of blood from his room, down the hallway, down the back stairs and into our room. I swear we don't beat him. Much, anyway.

At these rates, I might have to suck it up and rent one of those carpet cleaners for $50 from the grocery store. I haven't tried to use one since circa 1995 when I moved out of my apartment in Alexandria, Va., and headed for life in the big city of Washington, D.C. My apartment there in Woodley Park had ancient hardwood floors. Sure, I could get a splinter going to the bathroom, but at least I didn't have to vacuum.

So has anyone tried getting one of those do-it-yourself carpet cleaners of late? Am I better off sucking it up and hiring someone at that price? Bjorn's Blackberry is about to implode so we've been thinking of getting him an iPhone, partially so he can follow the NCAA tournament on his phone and stop using mine. Which is better? Bjorn + iPhone and us cleaning ourselves or hiring professionals and no iPhone?

Blackmail photo

The great big bed

When we moved into the new house, one of our first orders of business was buying a new king-sized bed. With two little kids, it was impossible to have one of them in addition to us in the queen-sized bed and not wake up with bruised kidneys due to tiny, but powerful little arms and knees that seem to find the most sensitive spot to kick you at 3 a.m. after visiting complaining of a bad dream. 

So far, it's been mostly a good thing. We actually like cuddling with the kids (most days), but the best part is being able to pull them into bed with us and going back to sleep instead of having to constantly return them to their beds. I know, I know, we're supposed to break them of this habit and we will. Eventually. 

When Meg comes down in the middle of the night, she never just comes by herself. Instead she almost always brings some sort of accomplice in the form of a lovey (or multiple loveys) with her. I changed the sheets on Friday and this is what I found that had probably accumulated over a week. 

This morning was unusual -- we had both kids in bed with us (usually just one and usually just Meggie). Andy fell asleep on our bed with his head on the foot of the bed. Meg started in her own bed, but woke up screaming something around 3ish having rolled over on her Elmo book that makes noise.

Genealogy for dummies

So we have a new favorite show in this house. Well, I have a new favorite show and everyone else kind of likes it. It's NBC's Who Do You Think You Are? which is sort of a reality genealogy show. I know, right? How dorky, except it's kind of cool. So the premise is you get these "celebrities" and they work with professions to track down their family history.

We've done a fair bit of research in our family so I am familiar with the process and the search. My only real complaint is they make it seem so easy sometimes. Sure, it's a piece of cake when Rosie O'Donnell walks into the Canadian library and the researcher has her information and pulls it up like that. In the real world, you spend eight hours going blind trying to read cursive handwriting on microfiche until you finally find something, anything useful. Still, it's cool to watch. My sisters, mother and I are all into it.

Texas declares indepedence

This weekend, we all went down to Washington on the Brazos, Texas, to celebrate the 175th anniversary of the signing of the Texas Declaration of Independence from Mexico. My dad has, well, we have an ancestor named George Washington Smythe who signed and they were inviting ancestors of the signers to come to the event. Some of it was a little corny with people dressed in period garb, but a lot of it was actually really cool. The best was on Sunday when they did a roll call of all the signers and family members stood up and were recognized. We had good representation with 14 people from our side and another 10 or so that we met there, but some families seemed to have dozens. It was really very moving to see as well as hear the individual stories. The favorite part for the kids? Playing in the pool at the hotel with my sister. Figures.

All of us getting ready for the roll call (thanks to Frances for taking the group photo and providing the blanket that we stole).

Mom helping Meg play on stilts. This was part of the kids section that focused on toys and entertainment kids of that era would have had.

My favorite photo -- dad with a bouquet of meat as we got ready for lunch.