Perspective

Last night I walked out of the grocery store at 7:30. The wind hit me and I thought, "I HATE winter! I can't wait for spring weather."

It was about 48 degrees. I was wearing some soccer warm-up pants and a long sleeve t-shirt. No coat, no gloves, no hat because I didn't need them.

Complaining about temperatures below 50 and calling it "winter"...man, I love being a southerner!

Anna's First Beach Trip

Last week we took Anna to the beach.

Here's what I didn't bring with me:
- Anna's bathing suit
- Sunscreen for Anna
- Sunscreen for Jamie and me
- Any type of summer clothing for myself
- Towels
- A blanket
- Anna's hat and/or sunglasses
- Beach-appropriate footwear for myself

Here's what we did have:
- The three of us
- 80 degree weather
- Aqua blue water
So basically everything you really need.

Anna was not a fan. The water was a little too cold and when we stuck her feet in she screamed.


The sand felt funny and tasted even worse.

And getting her feet rinsed at the showers was terrible!

But she enjoyed lounging on the picnic table in the sun while we brushed her off and got her dressed.

And was quite happy once we put her back in her stroller and she could play with her feet again.


Anyway, I can't have a kid who hates the beach so I guess this summer we'll just have to make several trips until she loves it.

Romance At Its Finest

Tonight was date night. We passed a cemetary on our way to dinner and I asked Jamie, "You're not going to bury me when I die, right? What will you do with my body?" My thought was that I prefer to be cremated, but I wasn't sure we'd ever discussed it. And date night is a good time for serious, albeit morbid, heart-to-hearts.

Jamie responded, "Donate it to science."
Me: "But I don't want to be donated."
Jamie: "You'll be dead. It won't be your body anymore, it'll be mine." And then he laughed at the thought of owning a body.
Me: "Seriously."
Jamie: "I'm going to have you stuffed and mounted. I'll hang you above the fireplace. We've been looking for something to go there. I'll have them make your face like the wild animals people mount. In a snarl. Might make it awkward when I start dating again."
Me: "I hate you."

A few minutes later he hit himself in the face with the door as we left his grandparents. You know what they say about karma.

In case you were wondering...

Anna did have a 5 month birthday and we did take pictures. I haven't done a post yet because our computer has died AGAIN and I don't know how to put pictures on this here iPad. But it's coming soon! I promise.

Five Months

Little Miss Anna is five months old today! She's getting soo big! See?


This month she:
Celebrated her first Christmas! We had a great time celebrating with her and travelling all over the east coast.

Had her first trip on a plane, and did a whole lot better than I was expecting! I was pretty much expecting 3 hours of screaming, but she only cried for a few minutes on two separate occasions.

Got her first tooth! Sorta. It's there, I can feel it but you can't quite see it yet.

Discovered squealing and fell in love. She used to smile, babble or giggle when she was happy, cry when she was upset; now it's all squealing all the time. She squeals when she's happy, sad, angry, tired, bored, hungry...it apparently expresses all emotions.

Finally met her cousins! Biological and honorary.

Found her feet and fell in love again. She had noticed her toes before, but now she's really aware that they're great play things.

She's growing and changing so fast that I'm sure I missed something! She is more and more fun every day and we love her to pieces!!

Christmas Gifts for a Four-Month Old

I just got done wrapping Anna's gifts. With her sitting next to me for most of it. It all seems a little futile - wrapping gifts I bought so I can unwrap them later. But it also felt wrong to not have gifts for her (me) to open tonight when we do our family Christmas. So I spent the last 20 minutes wrapping gifts that I will spend 20 minutes unwrapping in a few hours. At least I got to write "From: Mommy and Daddy" on them, which was fun. And actually I wrote "From: Momny and Daddy". Still not quite in the flow with all those bumpy letters. I kept coming up one bump short on the second "m".

Jamie and I discussed how we would do gifts for Anna several weeks ago. It's important to us to raise kids who understand material possessions are not so important and that Christmas is not just a fancy name for Give-Me-Stuff Day. It seemed a little hypocritical to say, "Christmas is about Jesus. Now here's your ridiculously huge pile of presents, most of which you don't need and will only play with for a day or two." So we decided we'd do three gifts: something she could play with, something we wanted her to have and an outfit. We're also giving her a Christmas book and hope in the future to make a new Christmas book or movie a shared gift between the many members of our clan of mini-Hotalens.

Of course, a few days after we came up with this plan all on our own, I read on someone else's blog this little ditty: "Something you want, something you need, something to wear and something to read." I've now seen that on approximately 39,000 different websites. Blogs, articles, Facebook posts. It's everywhere. Not only are we completely unoriginal with our gift giving plan, but we didn't even make it rhyme. I feel so dull and uncreative.

Maybe when she's older and figures out we're not the only ones who follow that gift giving recipe, I can convince Anna I started it.

Dear Anna

As I've previously stated on many, many occasions, please don't grow up too fast. If at all possible, stay a sweet little peanut of a baby forever.

But please, please for the love of God and all that is good and holy in this world please let your mama get some ding danged sleep!

If you could grow up to the point of sleeping 8 hours a night and then stop right there, that would be perfect. Please and thank you.

All My Love,
Mommy

On a completely unrelated note, parenthood and insomnia do not mix.