What is the fascination?

For some reason all children seem to have a fascination with balls. Now you can get your head out of the gutter...I am talking the round toy variety. We have just about 100 balls in our house. I know this because I recently tried to organize our toys here. I ended up cleaning out our toy boxes and rooms and rid ourselves of some older less used toys. It was in this toy cleaning mission that led me to my discovery of just how many balls we have in our house. We have the typical outdoor variety of swirled pastel colors, wiffle balls for the t-ball set up here, some fun squirty ones that we have for the pool, little ones that rattle, some that go round and round in other toys, you get the drift.

So I organized our toys as best as one can with two active little girls with fantastic imaginations that like to stuff things into pocketbooks. One of the bins I reserved just for balls and I was amazed at how many I ended up putting into it. Now comes the love of all things round. The first thing that my kids do each morning it seems is to empty out this one bin of balls. I can't figure out why they do this. It's very intriguing to me.

Outside in the yard we have a few bigger balls to play with. Again it is fascinating to me to see the girls play with these balls too. Especially to see how the hand eye coordination comes together for them. Kicking a ball is something I have probably always taken for granted as something you just do, but apparently it is yet another milestone for children. Learning to throw, kick and hit a ball are all gross motor skills they have to learn. Who knew? Reason #1502 for why I am again not going to get mother of the year award.

In other news, we finished our long weekend away in New Hampshire. We did Storyland again and I am afraid we may have scarred Aimee for life by taking her on the log flume ride. She loved all of it until she got wet. She will get knee deep in sand and dirt and get any type of food on her shirt. But when the slightest bit of anything wet gets on her pants or shirt she wants to immediately change her outfit. Another toddler/preschooler quirk I have found.

We also had a family first for us. We all slept together in one room while in NH. We have access to a family house that my parents built forever ago before they had us kids. However, this weekend both my parents and my brother and sister in law were up there as well. So we were in one room with a double bed, pack and play and aerobed. This is the first time Aimee has slept in a bed without a side rail. Of course the bed was technically on the floor and to be completely honest we did find her at one point face down on the floor after rolling the 6 inches off the mattress, but she did a great job with it overall.

Next up for us is preschool. We go to a parent orientation on Thursday and then a visitation day next Tuesday to gear up for the big start next Thursday. So we'll see how it goes. Why oh why do I have these terrible visions of Mister Mom where I go the wrong way for drop off and pick up? Stay tuned for our adventures in preschool.

As for my own quest, I am down 2 lbs from last week at this time. So it's a start. Not quite what they see on the biggest loser but then again I don't have 4-6 hours to devote to exercising everyday.

The Fruits of My Labor

I have struggled with weight my entire life. I have always been athletic, was a former gymnast but always seemed to carry around about 20 extra pounds. It didn't keep me down and I could always still fit into a size 12 easily. But once I had children the whole weight thing has just shifted from bad to worse.

After having Aimee, I was able to lose most of the baby weight save for about that original 20 plus another 15 or so. Then having Nicole I was able to get back down to my pre-weight which again is about 35 (20 before and 15 post-baby) above where I want to be. But then since Nicole's birth I have had a hard time getting the weight off. I hate it because I have all these clothes pre-children that I want to get back into. At first I attributed it to my hypothyroidism which I was diagnosed with about 8 months after having Nicole and since I hadn't gone to my primary care doctor forever so who knows how long it was actually going on. But I just got word that after nearly a year of changing my dose of synthroid that I am now where I should be with my thyroid function. So there it is...I am fat. Yep, so I decided that I would be inspired by my friend Emily over there at The Shrinking Mama that I would join Weight Watchers (okay...again) and try to get the post baby and pre-baby weight off. So I went on Tuesday night and weighed in, got my pamphlets and sat through a very helpful meeting. See, I think that most heavy people know what they are supposed to do, it's just putting it into action that is the hard part. So I have made a committment to myself that I am going to do this. It helps that my insurance will reimburse me up to $150 with my weight loss benefit but still, I am doing this. I am not brave enough to post my weight on the side there, but suffice to say it's over 200 lbs.

So wish me luck and endurance. I think that is what I really need! I will let you know how I do along the way. We are heading away this weekend to try Storyland one more time since Aimee has not stopped talking about it since we last went. So I have already packed a cooler full of good food and hope that I can convince my ever loving husband not to eat out every single meal because that is definately my downfall.

See you on the flip side!

Why?

I realize that I have been missing in action for a while and my sincerest apologies as I know when other people's blogs that I enjoy reading go days even weeks without updates I get a bit bummed. But we have been busy around these parts. We made a trip to North Conway to hit Storyland. Though the weather wasn't as nice as we had hoped we did still manage to escape raindrops. Aimee wasn't sure she wanted to go on rides but once we waited in line and finally managed to get on the rides she decided that she instantly wanted to go back on them. So we made it to the flying dutch shoes, the ferris wheel type balloon ride, the antique cars (her personal favorite) and of course the train that takes you all around Storyland. I don't feel as though we saw all of the park. It's not Disneyworld by far but there really is a lot to do. So we had a nice little vacation of 5 days with just the girls and it was a lot of fun.

But we are back now and we came back with a fun new little word....why? To every single question that Aimee asks and I answer, the next word is why? I know that kids go through this and have been a babysitter, cousin, aunt, etc. to many of these questions, but the beauty of those roles is that you can leave the questions after a while. When it is your own child it's not so easy. I am not sure when this phase came into our lives and if she is just being curious or trying to annoy me down to the last nerve of my existence. Either way, it has been a challenging week with the "whys?" as I call them.

Many of them seem to be easily explanable. But many are harder to get into. Like this morning, she wanted to go see daddy but he was in the shower and I told her she had to wait until he was done so of course came "why?" I tried to explain it as best I could because after all, I rarely take a shower alone in the bathroom, she and Nicole are most always in there with me as I take my 90 second morning showers because of the fighting that occurs on the other side of the shower curtain, but that is a post for another day. It was also a hard concept to grasp I am sure because Daddy is often there to help when she has her tubbys. I am not sure I am ready for telling her all the differences between men and women and since there are no boys in our family right now (no, we aren't thinking of adding a third thank you very much...I meant cousins, etc.) she doesn't get the exposure to the differences. So after a while, the why's got to me and I decided to use something a friend suggested and I threw out there and simply responded....because it is an elephant. That actually seemed to work for a bit and we got onto the business of getting dressed and ready for school. Strange huh?

So that is basically it. That is where we have been. Up next for us is yet another trek up North because it was nice to get away. I wouldn't call it a vacation because really when you have kids do you have a vacation? It's really just a change of scenery for a while. Of course we saw all of the scenery because what else can you do when your children wake up at 6AM each morning except start the day with them? Could explain why I am typically ready for bed when I put them down.