First off, happy first (ok, today is his second) day of new job, James!

2. We didn’t go see the panda. The tickets I had procured were pretty early. We live a fair ways away from the national zoo (hello northern Virginia suburbs!) We would have had to get up crazy early. So when all of a sudden I realized that WE WERE GOING TO GET SNOW last weekend, the conversation went something like this:

me: so. the panda. we’re going to have to get up early.
james: yeah. very early.
me: yup. early early early.
both of us: ….
me: so you know, it is supposed to snow this weekend!
james: SNOW! wow, gee, we wouldn’t want to go out and get caught in the snow.
me: nope, we definitely wouldn’t. and you know we have to wait in line to see the panda, we wouldn’t want our kids waiting in line outside in the freezing cold snow.
james: nope, wouldn’t want that.
both of us: we’d better not go.

Yeah. So, maybe next time. When it’s not so early. And so freaking cold.

3. We DID get SNOW! YAY! And did you know that Target has SWIMMING SUITS ON DISPLAY and have had them on display since JANUARY? I’ve been meaning to post a big ???!&#$*#&@???? about that and have forgotten. We don’t need short sleeve craziness YET, Target, so just CHILL OUT with your swimming suits and your pool toys and your sidewalk chalk and your bubbles and beach balls. JEEPERS!

So yeah, I’m bitter, because I can’t find my kids snow boots anywhere. Grrrr. Anyway, it started snowing late Saturday afternoon, snowed all night, and we had about a foot, or maybe a bit more, Sunday morning. It was all done snowing by then, which is what I call a PERFECT SNOW STORM! I took the kids out and we all played/ shoveled in the snow, then James came out, and I went in and he kept shoveling and the kids kept playing. I popped my head out to ask the kids if they wanted to come in, but they were having a blast. Despite the icicles wedged in between their soaking wet socks and their sneakers, because they don’t have snow boots. Jocelyn loved to gingerly lay herself down in the snow and make snow angels, though it took a few times of showing her how to move her arms and legs for her to catch on. Ethan loved to climb up the snow hills all the shoveling created and slide down them. I loved sitting inside with a cup of tea watching from the couch with my feet in slippers. Yesterday, I was in serious pain from the shoveling, the “you didn’t lift with your knees” sort of aching sore back muscles pain. Thankfully, it seems to be all gone today.

Oh, the back/ neck muscles weren’t just sore from the shoveling (i am a wuss, but not that much of a wuss). Ethan threw a tantrum at one point on Friday and as I was handing him off to his father, he punched me in the side OF THE NECK. I mean he really got me. DAMN it hurt, and DAMN it totally wonkified my whole spinal column. So yesterday, I was still dealing with the weird neck issues (I haven’t wanted to go see a chiropractic so badly in my life*) and then with the back muscles it was just too much. Again – today, feels like everything is spit-spot.

* Actually not true, I was probably in much more pain after I was rear-ended many many years ago. But nothing fades the past like the present!

4. Ethan did have a couple of punching, kicking, head butting tantrums over the weekend. He got tossed in his room and ignored for them, and his Geotrax train went into timeout until the next day. He seemed to get over them much quicker however, and James said that he could see the pause, in his mind, before he just let loose. The pause was non-existent before, so he is definitely making progress. He often will inform me, after he does something, “That was a good choice, mommy! I make good choices!” Yesterday he had a good day at school as well, no notes, no visits to the office, and his afternoon teachers said he did great. Nothing like bribery and rewards, so he got 2 M&Ms when we got home.

5. Work is a lot busier lately. And worse, it’s the kind of busy where I have to pro-actively do stuff, rather than just passively do what is handed to me. I have to put on the grown-up hat and make calls and act like I know what I’m doing, and convince people to spend the money in their budget by giving me work. The calls have turned into meetings, where I will again, have to act like I know what I’m doing, and use words like, strategy, goals, focus, standards, accessibility, etc. I DO know what I’m doing, but it’s much easier to do the passive thing than the proactive thing. I do get to ride on the metro train to DC tomorrow though, which I always enjoy, and of course, that also means there’s a Perfect Pita in my future as well. Yummilicious.

6. Birthday parties. Jocelyn is turning 2 in March, and it seems like we should be at the stage in our parenting to have a real children’s party, instead of just inviting our friends over for a get-together and make a cake and call it good. However, she IS 2, which is still pretty young, and have YOU had a house full of kids over? I haven’t, and I smell disaster. I am thinking of inviting our neighbor kids, the other kids in her daycare, setting up kid tables with butcher paper and crayons on them, making a cake, getting pizza delivered, and calling it good. I should think of it as like a trial run to Ethan’s birthday in May, when we’ll invite his class for some sort of party function. Eek. I’m scared just thinking about it.

7. Home improvement. I don’t know if you know, but Costco has a coupon for $5 off their laminate flooring. We have a room in the basement that we’ve just got finished by a contractor, and we’ve decided to lay the floor ourselves. I have vast dreams in my head of how we’ll become pros at laying this floor and then we’ll move on to bigger and better things. We’ll floor our bedroom and closets! We’ll floor the other bedrooms! Then the HALLWAY! THEN THE WORLD!!!! MUAHAHAHAHAHA! I’m actually pretty excited, we were originally going to have our contractor do the flooring, but after looking at the instructions, we thought, “Oh we can do THIS.”

I’m sure you’ll hear about the divorce from “irreconcilable differences” soon, all stemming from arguments on the proper way to lay laminate flooring.

That’s it for now.

– amy walks the walk, but never talks the talk