We are in the game

We have just submitted our first offer on a house. It's a spunky old (1890 old!) Victorian just 4 blocks away from where we live now. Our dream has been to live in a house with a yard, one more room, off street parking, in Nob Hill near Wallace Park. We definitely have many more house desire details in our dream (because we sure have had the time to think about it) but we are willing to compromise on quite a bit if we get the house in the ideal location.

Lily is 14 months now and is all about walking(Frankenstein style), climbing, and trying to jump. We're much more about playing in parks than taking long walks these days. If she's not in her high chair, car seat, or reading a story on one of our laps, she is moving...ALWAYS MOVING. The imitation game is also much more front and center these days so we are more aware of what we're saying and doing, more doing at this point. Her talking is still babble and I would guess only has a vocabulary of around 10 words (but doesn't say them consistently) but wow, the amount she understands amazes me every day. I can say "what would you like to wear today?" and she'll go to her drawer and pull out an outfit and is already showing picky signs about what she wants to wear (I had to dress her in a heavy sweatshirt on a 90 degree day). I used to use the ergo carrier 99% of the time and now it's only about 50% because of her weight and her desire to be more mobile. I thought I'd have her weaned by now but I still breastfeed right after she wakes up in the morning and before her bedtime story. I enjoy it, I'm lazy about switching up what works, and I'm letting her give me a sign which she kinda is with nursing for shorter amounts of time. Sometimes I'm embarrassed by the fact that I'm still breastfeeding but at the same time I'm really proud of myself for making it this long after the nightmare start I had.

It's a busy week ahead with house stuff (our place could be on the market by the end of the week), a tennis tournament, and the Blue Lake Sprint Triathlon...lots of stuff that we hope goes really well and smoothly this week.

Here are a few recent pics of Lil', enjoying her corn on the cob and playing in the park.

Hot and Cold

As we sat and ate dinner tonight, feeding Lily some of our Thai food, I thought about how glad I am that she is a good eater most of the time. She still has her moments of refusing to eat something she loved the day before or dropping her food on the floor piece by piece, but for the most part she eats very well. Right after that good thought I remembered that she had cried all the way home for half an hour in the car yesterday, so the good moments are tempered by the very difficult moments. Then there are the moments of sheer delight, like when I peeked in on her as she was waking up from her afternoon nap today and there she was laying on her stomach with her head propped up on her hand like she was laying on a beach enjoying the view. I'm thinking of these ups and downs as they hit on a point that I read about in this article and the article that it's responding to: http://www.babble.com/mom/health-and-relationships/parents-are-happy/. Namely, the point that parents have higher highs and lower lows than non parents. I find it to be definitely true. Do I find, as the graph shows, that my average happiness is lower now versus a couple of years ago? I don't think so, but it doesn't sound that crazy either.

Anyway, it's been a while since we blogged. In the meantime we took a nice vacation back to Chicago and Michigan and hung out with our families. It was great to see everyone and introduce Lily to Klinger Lake and Thunder Road, hopefully she gets to keep adding great memories at these places as the years roll along. Here are a couple of cute pictures from the trip, there's also a full album posted on Picassa, linked from the upper left of the main page of our blog. The first pic is with Lily's Aunt Emily, cousin Sophia, and Great Grandparents Mitchell. The second is with her Aunt Sonya, Uncle Eric, and cousins Ryan and Emma.