Thursday, September 29, 2011

Somehow, over the last month or two, the kids have suddenly become involved in many more activities than we have ever had before. I feel like a good chunk of my life these days is spent shuttling them back and forth to school and their various practices and classes. Right now we have Brownies, soccer, dance, and Karate, and next week we will be adding tumbling and Spanish as well! A number of these things are just at our YMCA, which is pretty low key, thank goodness!

Today is Noah's half birthday, so tonight we are going to take him out for ice cream to celebrate. It's hard to believe that tomorrow he will be closer to being five than three, when it seems like it was just yesterday that he was turning four. He is still as sweet as ever, but his interests have definitely changed over the past few months. After years of being a huge Thomas the Train fan, he moved onto a Star Wars obsession, and doesn't give Thomas a second thought now. He won't even wear his Thomas underwear anymore, which makes me a little sad.

Steve bought two lightsabers awhile ago, and he and Noah play with them constantly. Even though he never "wins", Noah never tires of the game. Steve drew this picture of himself and Noah, maybe to give Noah the impression that he is better than he actually is. I'm sure if Noah decided he was tired of the lightsabers, Steve would be pretty disappointed!A couple months ago, Noah saw a Storm Trooper gun at Target and begged and begged to get it. I still don't love the idea of playing with weapons so I told him that he could save up his own money to buy it, thinking there was no chance he'd be able to come up with the $20 price of the gun. He obviously had more faith in himself than I did, because he immediately set out to get $20. We told him that when we go out for ice cream, he could skip the ice cream and we'd give him $2 instead so he did that a few times, plus he did little jobs around the house and looked in all our nooks and crannies for money. One night he found $6 outside of Peach Wave, and another day he found $5 on the floor of Target, so both of those finds helped him quite a bit. We had a random plastic tube hanging around our house and he saved his money in there, calling it (for some unknown but charming reason) his "money carriage".Last week he finally had enough money so we all went to Target, with Noah proudly holding the money carriage. He picked out the gun, brought it to the check-out line, and purchased it all by himself.He has been playing with it a ton since then, and still seems very excited that he finally owns it. Even though I have always been opposed to toy guns, I don't begrudge him this one because he worked so hard for it and it makes him so happy. So far he has been following the rule of "no shooting Mommy", but if that changes at any time in the future, I may quickly decide otherwise!

Monday, September 12, 2011

I am so happy that September is here! Fall is absolutely my most favorite season. I am not the only around here who is excited looking forward to cooler temperatures, though. In the future, I should probably not buy Allie any fall clothes or a winter coat while it is still warm, because then I end up with a little girl who insists on either wearing long sleeves and pants when it is 98 degrees, or wearing a winter coat with nothing else.Allie and Noah started preschool a couple weeks ago and they both seem to love it. It's a four hour day, with Allie going two days a week and Noah going three. I thought Allie might cry the first day at least, but she barely glanced at Steve and me as we walked out the door. When I picked her up, I asked one of her teachers if Allie had been sad at all, and she said, "Not even for a minute!"
Several people have asked me if I felt sad, dropping my baby off at preschool. Although I certainly adore her and love spending time with her, I really wasn't a bit sad. It may be different when she starts kindergarten or something, but for now, the idea of having eight hours every single week all to myself is just too exciting for me to be sad. After more than seven and a half years of doing all our grocery shopping with the kids, I can now finally go grocery shopping all by myself! Huzzah!

My marathon training is going okay. The marathon is just over a month away at this point. Several weeks ago I ran 20 miles, my farthest so far, and it was rough. The last three miles were kind of on the miserable side, and I didn't do much but lay in bed for most of the day after I got back. Ever since then, I have been a little more nervous about the marathon. This weekend I will be going 22 miles, and I am definitely wishing it were already over. I ran a half marathon a couple weeks ago, which I really loved, although that's another thing that is making me more anxious about the marathon. While the half marathon was great, I didn't really want to turn around and run it again right away, you know? Anyway, Steve took this picture of me in the half, right before I crossed the finish line. I am the one in the purple shirt. I finished in two hours, six minutes, and six seconds.