catch up...

My lord - a month has passed and I haven't posted. I have a valid reason (in my eyes). Typically, I'd been writing my posts from the comfort of my work desk. Suddenly, the black screen of death popped up when I tried to open BlogSpot. Basically, it's a black screen with two eyeballs, fire, and a warning that you're looking at something inappropriate. Apparently my blog is too risque. I've missed my blogging and I think some readers have missed it as well, so I'm going to commit to a weekly post each weekend.

In that month of blog silence, so much has happened. A month in baby time is like years in adult time. Even then, I think they learn more in a month than we even bother learning anymore in over a year, or even in the rest of our lifetime, depending on the person.

Her vocabulary is insane. As was the case before, she may not be the most coordinated of children, but her communication skill are off the chart. (Please note - I'm not making this up. Other parents as well as the teachers have told us so.) Some of her new favorite things:

Where ee go? (Where did he/she/it go?)
Whahappened? (What happened)
Izokay (It's ok)
Eereego (Here you go)

She says "angkoo" (thank you) every time you give her something. She tells Rambo to "gehdown" (get down) from the couch when she's sick of him. She says "ssshhh...daddy seepin" when Jamie's still in bed in the morning. She's great at putting whole phrases together too. Multiple words and thoughts all mushed together, but distinguishable to Jamie and I.

One of the things that absolutely cracks us up right now is her use of "okay". Suddenly, it sounds as though we are the ones bugging her to do things. For example, she's look at Jamie and pat his legs and say "ubhere?" when she wants to sit on his lap. He'll say, "you want to get up here?" She'll say, "Okay" as if Jamie was the one that asked her to do it in the first place. Instead of "yes", everything has turned to "Okay".

She's running around and learning new things each day when it comes to agility and maneuvering the world around her. You watch her do something incredibly simple (like shake a cup to get a stuck Mega Block out of it, and you wonder how she knew to shake it to get it out.)

Her relationship with the pups is growing, and they're more willing to interact with her now as well. She'll stick her face in Rambo's, and when his whiskers brush her face, she'll say "tickle tickle". She'll hug them goodbye when we leave the house. For some reason, she's taken to trying to sit on Ripley, which she doesn't exactly appreciate.

Again - so much has happened, and not blogging for a month means that I've lost jotting down some of those new moments as they happen. Seeing as this is a place to not only share her life and the bizarre, hilarious things called toddlers/parenthood/etc, but also a place for me to keep track of things for my own purposes, I need to get back on the blogging track!

Keep an eye out for posts on the weekends now!

Missed you all!

accidents happen...

Let me set this up for you…

It was a nice day and Alexis and I had just run out to get some coffee and milk via the Dunkin Donuts drive-thru. (I had run out of milk and that is NOT acceptable and she was more than happy to let me know.) I decided that we should sit on the front porch seeing that the lawn in the backyard was wet from dew. I felt bad that the poor dogs always seem to stay cooped up inside, so I pull out the blue tie-outs (those plastic-y long rope things that you can tether a dog to) and decide they’re coming out with us. After making sure they’re nice and secure, they go tearing off into the yard. Alexis wants to get down off the porch, so I pick her up and let her start running around the yard while I sit on the step sipping my coffee.

A little voice in my head made me think that Alexis plus two dogs on lines might not be a good idea, but for who knows what reason, I ignored it and kept sipping. And that’s when things went into fast forward and I moved to slow-mo. I saw as the tie-out line made a circle around where she was standing, and I heard the car coming. I looked Rambo in the eyes and slowly said, “staaayy,” but I think that set him off into thinking, “oh my gosh something great is coming and I need to go go go go.” Before I know it, he takes off, the line wraps around her ankles, and before she has a second to react he tears her feet out from under her and she goes face-down onto the sidewalk (oh yes, sidewalk – couldn’t have happened on the grass or anything.)

At that moment, the look of terror on my face must have looked just as terrible as the look of terror on hers. She started screaming (who can blame her). I run over to her, pick her up, and see the damage. Luckily, she fell on her cheek and not her nose/mouth, so teeth were intact and nose wasn’t bleeding. Her cheek, however, was a terrible shade of white and was already getting big. I try to calm her down and go running inside to grab an ice-pack. She’s screaming at the top of her lungs, but somehow Jamie kept on sleeping.

We go back outside and I rock her to try to soothe her. She won’t let me put the ice on her cheek, so I gave up on that while I tried to get her to calm down. When she’d finally stopped crying, she let me put her back on her feet and I ran in to get my cell phone. I figured this warranted a call to the pediatrician to make sure I didn’t have to worry about any internal damage. She assured me that, as long as she didn’t start vomiting or acting funny or what have you, she was ok. While I’m talking to her, Alexis had started saying “not nice” to the dogs and “isokay,” so I got the sense that things were going to be alright.

The horrible mark on her cheek moved up to under her eye on Sunday, so she has a nice shiner. Around her ankles, there is a terrible red mark where the line essentially burned the skin away. But children are amazingly resilient.

I hesitate to even tell the story, feeling as though it’s a confession to being a temporarily terrible mother. But I have to remind myself that things happen. In the future, I need to listen to my instincts a little more closely and put aside that deliciously enticing coffee. I don’t want to ever post something like this again.