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.