swings

This is what happens when our family goes to the playground.

(It is super funny when Daddy chews on your toes.)

The sun is shining at our house today. Hopefully, it's shining at yours, too!

spring

Oh, thank goodness! It's finally spring. The furnace is occasionally not running. We can leave the house without three extra layers. And M, who has just started using her walking feet, is spending time on the ground, outside, for the very first time. We love watching her discover the world that has been waiting for her.

She love-love-loves flowers. I think it's adorable and am also hoping that it bodes well for my plan to make her a master gardener before she hits kindergarten. Her key interests right now seem to be shredding and eating flowers, but I think I can work with that.

We are lucky to have an amazing playground a short walk from our place. (We also have a sketchy, dingy playground a short walk in the other direction. We will not be playing there often.) When we're not competing for space with the twenty billion kids from the Montessori school down the hill, M has a blast on the swings. Personally, I'm ready to move onto the sandbox and jungle gym, but I think M's going to make me wait a few more months...

A few days ago, M and I took a walk down our block to watch the neighborhood kids tear around. The big kids were all sweet to M, saying hello to her and bringing her dandelions and lemon balm. It's so strange to think that in a few seasons, she'll be racing around, too, running up and down the street, riding a bike, and practicing being away from us. Frankly, the idea paralyzes my brain.

Fortunately for me, that time is still another spring or two away...

escape

So I didn't post anything last week.  In my previous blogger life, I thought the world would end if I missed a week.  Readers would take to the streets in angry protest.  I would lose all my momentum and be unable to pick up where I left off.  If I missed one post, I might never ever blog again.  

It's safe to say that my position on this may have mellowed a little bit.  For one thing, I'm trying to get in the habit of not stressing over things that are a) unimportant or b) utterly out of my control.  I haven't mastered it yet, but I think this might be a useful thing to have in my skill set in a few short weeks...

Besides all that, last week was just plain busy.  I worked some extra hours.  There was a last minute doctor's appointment to address the fact that my feet had suddenly become the size of dachshunds.  (The verdict: typical pregnant lady swollen feet.  Go figure.)  We took a quick tour of the birthing center where we're planning to have this little muffin next month.

And we went for a long, long walk.

On a day that started out sunny, I woke up wanting to be outside.  Really, I wanted to go on a three-day camping trip somewhere on the coast, but that didn't seem to be in the cards. And I don't know how well I'd do these days, lying on the ground with a sleeping bag.  So instead, we took a mini-field trip to Discovery Park.

It was nice.  The sky threatened rain that never fell.  The trails were mostly empty.  When we did run into other people, they would smile at us and give my belly a knowing look.  We stopped to rest about twenty times on our trip down to the water, mostly discussing whether it was a good idea to walk all the way down, knowing that we'd then have to walk all the way back up.  We're no quitters, though, and we did eventually make it to the shore.

The trip back up was rougher.  I had to stop to sit down about every half a minute and we didn't make very good time at all, at least for the first stretch.  Then things leveled out a bit and I managed to get enough air in my lungs to actually look around and enjoy the scenery.

Definitely an afternoon well spent.  Hopefully, we'll manage to cram in a few more like it in the next few weeks.  If not, there's always time after the baby comes.  I told my man we should walk this trail again in about three months and that he should be the one to carry the baby next time.  He seemed a little dubious about the idea.  Actually, his exact response was "No."

I'm pretty confident, though, in my ability to change his mind.  Besides, by then, it will be two against one...

And, oh my gosh, thanks to you all for your baby-naming ideas last week.  Crowdsourcing is always a fun way to brainstorm.  I think we're still stuck on the short list that we started with, but who knows, maybe one of your brilliant ideas will crop up in the end.  Apparently, we have several days to stick a name on the birth certificate, so things really could get down to the wire...


If you're wondering about last week's poll results, an overwhelming majority of you agreed that the biggest baby naming faux pas is giving your child a name that's hard to spell or pronounce.  Which, I'm sad to say, might mean that Aloysius and Siobhan are out of the running.