Sonja at 5 weeks:

Elena at 5 weeks:

Halle at 5 weeks:

Last Sunday, on Sonja’s 1 month birthday, I jogged my first full mile in nine or ten months.  Now that my body is ready for jogging again, I’ve been easing back into it slowly, but consistently.  I jogged five days last week, one mile each day.  They are slow, steady jogs.  No walking or stopping, but very slow paced.

Today my goal was to increase it to two miles.  I set everything up perfectly.  Elena and Sonja napping.  Halle watching Cars with colored paper and markers.  As I’m lacing up my shoes, Halle asks, “Can I use scissors and glue too?”  I tell her she can use the markers while I’m running and when I’m done, she can have the scissors and glue.  She’s a great kid and can be trusted with just about anything, but unsupervised scissors and glue is a line I’m not ready to cross just yet.

So I start jogging and I’m rocking it.  It becomes clear early on that I can totally make my two mile goal today.  Just before I finish my seventh lap (1.75 miles), Halle comes in whining, “When are you going to be done?!!”  I tell her soon, and I finish that lap, but I just can’t bring myself to ignore her for another lap.  I know jogging two miles is in me, and I’ll hit it the next time, but I chose Halle over myself and stopped a quarter mile short of my goal.

When I joined her at the table to see what she had been working on, she showed me this:

I was so impressed by all those straight lines that I took a picture of it.  Then I gave her the glue and scissors and she got to work.  She cut some beautiful rectangles.  Then she asked me to cut three little circles.  Then I went to the computer for a second to check something and saw my brother was online.  I chatted with him for a few minutes.  I was very close to Halle and could see her the whole time, but not the project she was working on because of the angle I was at.  As soon as I signed off with Joe to go sit back next to Halle, she held up her artwork and said, “Look, I made a yellow submarine.”

Is it just me, or is that pretty impressive for a kid who just turned 4?!  That’s a great submarine to create from memory using shapes she cut out of paper by herself and a glue stick!

Here are a few pictures I took of Halle before Mrs. Keri picked her up for their dinner date at the Melting Pot Saturday night.

I’ve heard plenty of stories where kids say something blunt about a stranger and embarrass the heck out of their parents. Before yesterday, I don’t think Halle had ever said anything like that. But yesterday, I got two. Well, almost.

Walking up to softball practice Halle said, “Mommy, she’s fat,” about an exceptionally large woman just out of ear shot. Halle, of course, didn’t think to whisper or be delicate about it. She wasn’t judging the woman or thinking of it as something negative. Just stating an observation. Using a word she probably learned recently to make sure she understood it. I would’ve felt horrible though if the woman had heard her.

Then, after practice when we stopped by Publix I heard Halle tell the older gentleman bagging our groceries that he had hair in his nose.  Again, just stating an observation.  Luckily, he was hard of hearing (or just doesn’t understand Halle) so when he asked me what she said I said, “She likes your hat.”  THANK GOODNESS Halle didn’t choose to correct me.

Two narrow escapes from embarrassment and from hurting the feelings of two people who didn’t deserve that.  Something tells me with three kids, I’ve got some of these moments left to go though.

Oh, and I almost forgot to mention that I stuck my own foot in my mouth in between these two events.  During softball practice, I referred to a little boy as “she” while talking to his parents.  They didn’t correct me, but I heard them throwing that masculine pronoun around a lot after that.  The little boy showed up to both practices wearing gender neutral clothes, a pony tail, and his exceptionally long and beautiful eye lashes.  And his name is Tatum.  If I didn’t hear it directly from his parents mouths, I still would think he’s a girl.  I imagine the parents must be tired of people making that mistake.  I know its super old that everyone thinks Elena is a boy.  So the only person who successfully embarrassed me yesterday was me.

Sweet Halle has been thinking of Elena a lot lately and its so cute I wanted to write down some things as I remember them.

Every time Dora comes on the TV Halle runs over to Elena and says, “ELENA! Doo Doo Dora is on!  Your FAVORITE!”  She honestly takes pleasure in the fact that Dora is going to make Elena happy.

Halle asked for spin brush toothbrushes since Jason and I have been using SonicCare spinbrushes and Annabelle has a spin brush at her house.  I surprised Halle yesterday with a combo pack that had a Pooh toothbrush and a Tigger toothbrush.  Both girls love Tigger and Pooh but favor Pooh, so I expected Halle to pick Pooh and Elena to be fine with Tigger.  Halle immediately said, “Pooh is Elena’s favorite so she should have that one.  I’ll take the Tigger toothbrush.”  My heart grew a little, I’m not going to lie.

Yesterday when Elena was napping, I said, “Guess what time is it, Halle?  Time to bathe Baby Sonja!”  (The girls seriously get excited about this every time).  Halle immediately said, “Mommy, we should wait until Elena wakes up.  She likes to watch Baby Sonja get a bath too.”

*Note:  There are also plenty of times when the story sounds more like “MOM! Elena KEEPS messing up my stuff!”  Or, “Can you put Elena in her room?  I don’t want her here.”  Or, “Elena needs to go in time out!  She’s pulling my hair again!”  But I still think, so far, they’re leaning towards sisters who are friends and not sisters who fight constantly.  My fingers are crossed!

Elena has taken quite the interest in the potty these past few weeks.  She started asking to sit on the potty about 2-3 weeks ago.  It started off she’d ask once every couple days, now she asks about 5-6 times a day!  She always tells us when she’s just peed and then asks to sit on the potty.  She connects the two, but hasn’t figure out to tell us before she goes yet.  I know I could be working with her on this.. taking her to the potty at regular intervals in the hopes of catching a real pee (she hasn’t actually peed in the potty yet), but I’m so not ready for this!  I keep thinking of how Angelle said she started working with Erin right when Adam was born, and of course it turned into every time Erin needed immediate attention to get on the potty, Angelle was breast feeding Adam or in the middle of something else she couldn’t walk away from.  It would definitely be that way over here.  Plus.. she’s only 20 months!  I can’t even fathom her in panties on a car ride.  She seems so young still.  For now, I just keep taking her every time she asks, and she loves feeling like a big girl on the potty without the pressure of having to do anything.  I hope she’s still interested in it when I’m ready to take potty training seriously.  But since I’m really in no rush, I’m not too worried about it.

Last night when I was straightening my hair, Halle asked me to straighten hers too.  Always have to take pics when I straighten her hair cuz she looks so different.  And I like seeing how long her hair really is!  :)

Of course, I can also see how dead the ends are.  There may be a haircut in the near future.

This is one of the pictures I’ve been holding onto in case I decided to use it in Sonja’s birth announcement.  Decided tonight that it didn’t make the cut, so I wanted to share it immediately.  :)  She’s so pretty.