Jumping and Dancing

Vake has become a dancin' fool. If you ask him, he'll happily run and dance and then jump for you. It is so sweet and funny to watch.

And this child runs everywhere- by the end of the day he's just exhausted from moving around so much- here's a video of a dance party we (Taren, Huff, Vake and I) had tonight- it was awesome.

Weight Watchers Wednesday!

Down 3.6 pounds this week. I credit it to last week's goal which was to drink 120 ounces of water a day. Which is not easy. Actually you sort of feel as though you are about to float away.



Is it ridiculous that I was so proud of myself for "winning" my little 5 pounds lost star?

Happy Birthday, Anne!!!!!

Here we are a year ago celebrating Anne's birthday!!!! Go Anne- you are the best!!!!
Big shout out to an awesome sister- we love you Aunt Anne!!!!!

Vacation- the first few days!

Canmore/Banff was awesome- after a little hiccup (err...screaming...on the flight on the way there, we were rewarded with an awesome condo and a great trip. We watched a lot of movies (here's baby Vake dancing with Aretha in the Blues Brothers)
You really cannot make this up- too cute.

We did a lot of hanging around in pajamas- which believe me was totally welcome and totally fun after a summer of being super hot and uncomfortable in Richmond. You can see the view that we had from the deck in the image below.

After we got there and got squared away, on Sunday we went to a Highland Festival- the weather was great and Vakey had an awesome view from Daddy's shoulders.

It was really beautiful and a great way to spend a day- and notice that we were all wearing winter clothes!!!!

This was looking back at the mountain from the festival.

Vake had a great time running around- so glad to be free of strollers and airline seats!

Here's a picture of all the participants doing the last bagpipe song.

We really couldn't have asked for nicer weather that day.

Music Man

Despite the fact that I am not at all musical, I love to listen to music- and so does Vake. When we are playing downstairs, he will beg for the music to be turned on. So Taren found a music class for the boys to take- here's little Vake trying out the instruments.

Weight Watchers Wednesday (actually Thursday)

Ok. So only lost 1/2 pound this week- will chalk it up to being sick and hurt (thus not exercising) and going out for birthdays, etc. Setting up the goal for lost of 2 pounds.

But, as Anne Monroe reminded me, at least it wasn't 1/2 pound in the wrong direction. And although I want to pick up speed, at least I am doing it in the right direction.

For those of you who are following along, I'm going to pretrack this week- in an attempt to eat my WW points correctly I am really going to work at planning at the beginning of the day what I am going to eat and then trying to stick to the plan supercarefully.

We are making progress- I've got my water consumption way up and my Diet Coke consumption down to two a day. And no alcohol. I'll check back in with you next Wednesday!

New Chair and Uncle Neil's Birthday

I've been hard at work uploading pictures of our vacation- I've almost got them organized. But is this post about vacay? Absolutely not!!!!! (I promise I'll be organized one day...)

So this is the little rocking chair that Eric had when he was little- he brought it from Seattle and it has been sitting around waiting to be reglued. The happy day has arrived- and Vake's in heaven- a chair his size!!!!


Here's the detail across the top.

Could a child look any more like his father? Really?

And yesterday we celebrated the birthday of someone very special- Uncle Neil. We got all dressed up and went to see Uncle Neil's parents- look at my big boy- now in the largest size smocked rompers I can find.

Sunday School

We are back in the full swing of things, Sunday school wise- I love the class that I am teaching- such sweet little pumpkins.

Baby Vake really likes being in the nursery with other children but I think it also totally wears him out- by about 11:45 this morning (once we got home) he was lying down on our living room floor, poor little baby. Hopefully we get a good nap out of this situation.

Long but Fun Day

A fun but busy day was had by all.

I had a full docket this morning (ick!) but our office's new intern who is working with me is making good progress so I am REALLY proud of him. Rock on.

Baby Vake spent a large portion of this morning at the playground.

I did a mountain of laundry and then Mom and I went down to Williamsburg with baby V to have dinner with my favorite professor. Dinner with a tired toddler is a full time exercise in parenting. Please tell me it gets easier when they actually have a true vocabulary.

Hittin' the hay now. Erico is MIA at Ocktoberfest. That cannot be good.

Weight Watchers Wednesday!

Down 1.8 pounds despite the fact I was on vacation and not nearly as careful at "adding" points as I should have been. (And it was two weeks).

Friends, that is a great start. I am so scared because the out-of-control gain has hit a speed of Mach-5. Ooof. Just need to keep it up.

We're Exhausted Around Here...

...but promise to post pics from our vacation as soon as we get unpacked and figure out where the heck we put the camera...

This one's for you, Cindy Goergen

90 days

So my good friend who we stayed with in Banff looks amazing- she has dropped probably 60 pounds in about 10 months- she is really pretty and now she is ti--ny.

I talked to her a lot about how she achieved her goal and it was, all at the same time, really simple and really really hard. She cut it down to about 1300 calories a day and she cut the Diet Cokes back to one a day.

So for the next 90 days, I am going to see if I can do what she did- just really restrict calories and drink water instead of my precious. Don't know if it is possible mostly because I am a total caffeine fiend and don't know if 1300 calories is going to cut it while I am training for the marathon.

But we'll see...and it is just for 90 days.

19 Months!!!!!

My little Vake-pumpkin - you are 19 months old! I cannot believe it.

What are you up to these days?You are a VERY active little boy. You don't sit still at all now!

You are constantly moving, running, getting into things. You love to roughhouse with your father and your Uncle Neil.

You are talking more and more and more. You say new words all the time and you always have a lot to say. You've memorized phrases from your books like "True Story" that you love to say. You're getting a pretty extensive vocabulary and you love to have conversations- you ask, "Who's that?" a lot. When other people in a conversation laugh, you try to laugh along to participate.

You love animals - especially dogs. You also love babies and everyone between the ages of newborn and five years old gets called a "baby."

You have started to be very picky about food and just refuse to eat most things. I'm sure it's a stage because you have always loved food.

You recently got your molars and that didn't seem to bother you. You weigh somewhere between 35 and 40 pounds and you are at least 36 inches tall. You wear a size 8-8.5 shoe. You are wearing mostly 3t and 4t clothes but all your pajamas are 5ts.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MARY SABRA!!!

To the best lady and Grandmary that I know!!!

You are the bomb.com and I am so happy that you belong to us!!!!

I am so glad I came to this party.

Airline Trip to Calgary

So many of you will remember my disastrous wild ride with Baby Vake that I took last year when Vake was about 4 months old. It culminated in his screaming for four hours and the pediatric dermatologist who was stuck next to us in first class getting blind drunk to ease the pain of being the person on the plane next to us. You will probably also remember that I was SO cocky on the Richmond to Charlotte leg because baby V was perfect on that route.

Cue the remix extended party version of our travel adventures. Vake was fine to Chicago. He was getting tired before we got on the plane to Calgary and once we boarded he LOST HIS MIND. Fortunately, he only screamed for about 30 minutes before he fell asleep on the floor of the plane.

People, it was terrible. Truly terrible. The lady sitting one seat ahead of us got upgraded to get away from us. And after we got off the flight (and I had apologized to everyone about 53 times) and had gotten looks of disgust/sympathy, the way that the customs line worked, I had to pass the people who hated us three times. The first time, a lady said to her husband, "Oh honey, that's the baby who screamed until he passed out."

BUT CANADA is BEAUTIFUL. And Neil, Liz and Erico are all saying that now burglars are going to break in. So if you are a burglar and you read my blog, please don't forget about the killer yellow labs living in the basement. Seriously, both Stilly and Judge can get pretty snarky!!!!

Good News, Bad News, Good News

Good News: I worked out one of my juries that was supposed to go the Tuesday I got back from vacation.

Bad News: Finally got back to Weight Watchers- up 10 (that's right, count them, ten) pounds since I gave it a break in June. Aargh.

Good News: VACATION STARTS SATURDAY!!!!