We were outside the other day and Mary Virginia climbed onto the armrest of my chair. As soon as she did it, she started shrieking with joy, “LOOK AT ME! I’M ON YOUR CHAIR! I’M SO HIGH!!” I’m not sure if she was proud of her accomplishment, or pleased with herself because she figured out
This isn’t the craziest birth story you’ll ever read. It isn’t the most dramatic or fastest or the closest call. But it is my craziest birth story. I’ve already told this story several times, and each time I feel a bit like I’m lying, or at least exaggerating because the timeline just doesn’t feel real. Whenever I tell it, I
It’s hard to know when or where to begin baby Thomas’s birth story. Does it start it when I felt my first, painful contraction? Or a month before that, when I packed my hospital bag and asked several close family and friends to please keep their phones on in the middle of the night just in case.
Last Friday I fulfilled my duty as a mother and on the last day of preschool I forced David to stand on the porch with his school bag, stare directly into the sun, and let me take photos. Since I happened to be two days past my due date, the night before the last day
The other day during breakfast, David leaned over and whispered into his sister’s ear. Then he looked up at me and said, “Mommy, I just told Mary Virginia she’s going to die soon.” He informed me like it was something we’d talked about ahead of time, and then he went right back to eating his pancakes. The
To make this video even more adorable, imagine Mary Virginia wearing a soft pink smocked dress with embroidered bunnies instead of the oversized Salty Dog Cafe shirt she asks to wear every day. While you’re at it, imagine that, instead of screaming “Why’s he not in a cage?” from the other room, David is singing along.
The past few weeks have been really cold and snowy, so we haven’t been letting Brigham outside like we normally do. He’s spending all his extra time looking for places to hide from the kids, and gazing out the window dreaming about…what do cats dream about? …Autonomy? Whenever I write a post about our cat, I use
David: Mommy, is tomorrow Friday? Me: No, tomorrow is Tuesday. David: But it’s not raining! Me: That’s because it rains some days but not other days. Since we’ve never really talked very much about the days of the week, I wonder if he’s asking these questions because he’s learning about them in school. So I ask: Me: If yesterday was
While I was pregnant with them, I knitted blankets for both of my babies. A green one for David, a purple one for Mary Virginia. They have their initials on them, and as soon as they’re born, I use it all the time to try to convince them to choose it as their comfort blanket. These take a
A friend of mine is pregnant with her second child and she asked me for advice on handling two. I drew a blank. After all, we’re still taking it day by day over here. Then it hit me, start praying for their sibling relationship now. Before Mary Virginia was born, I was mostly worried about how
The other day I picked up my purse and the strap broke. It’s been breaking for a while; it has a lot of bead work and it had started falling apart. But, like most things in my life, I ignored it because snacktime and book time and taking toys from your sister time does not wait
One of Tom’s Christmas presents to me this year was a photography class. And, before I go any further, talk about a slam-dunk Christmas from Tom. I got him a jacket he didn’t want and underwear. I want to take a moment to publicly apologize. After we, um, lost our DSLR this fall, we upgraded to a
When my mom describes me as a baby, she usually says I was, like, the sweetest baby ever. She says I was mild-mannered, chubby, bald, cuddly, and a great sleeper; I slept every night from 6 p.m. – 6 a.m. without fail. So when our kids wake up at 4:55 a.m., skip their nap, and
Tom got me an electric blanket for Christmas. I can’t figure out why my skin isn’t made of the same material as this blanket. It’s the perfect gift, the sort of gift that helps me know Tom really knows me. I’m always cold, and I can’t stand being cold. I’m the kind of person who has an overwhelming urge to
The other day we went to Target and left with ANOTHER new toy car for David, and ANOTHER doll for Mary Virginia. If you know anything about gender stereotyping and how toys perpetuate gender roles, then my shopping trip is grooming David to be an engineer at Ford Motor Company and Mary Virginia to flunk third grade math. If
When we play with Play-Doh, David usually doesn’t ever really form the dough “things”, he just smashes and drops it on the ground and asks me to flatten long pieces into roads for his cars. Meanwhile, his sister constantly tries to sneak tastes the Play-Doh even though, after every time she manages a bit in
Last night we went to a Thanksgiving celebration with friends, and we were driving home a bit later than we should have; not respecting bedtime quite as closely as we promised we would. When we stay out too late, Mary Virginia is not a happy traveller. While she cries the entire way home, the rest of us
My mom mentioned the other day that the leaves were beautiful at home — one of the prettiest falls she can remember. It occurred to me that now that I live in Richmond, a relatively flat city, I miss out on the fall colors in the mountains. When I was growing up I took the
Mary Virginia is just at the very beginnings of being interested in coloring. She’ll hold a marker, draw a few lines on the paper, and a few moments later try to climb on the table. The only reason I’ve even started “coloring” with her is because she wants to do whatever her brother is doing, so
Even though I work really hard to limit his screen time, David is a full-on TV-loving kid. He’ll watch anything, anytime, anywhere and if the TV is off, he asks me non-stop if we can turn it on. He tries different techniques all the time: “I have a good idea, Mommy! Let’s watch TV!” Or my
If you follow me on Instagram (if you don’t, I’m amandaleighvt), you know that my family’s version of a trip to the pumpkin patch was a trip to Kroger to buy pumpkins. There are pumpkins on my porch; everyone’s happy. No thanks to me, they did get to visit a real pumpkin patch, too. A
David was sitting on my lap reading books, and he started to flop around and get rough like toddlers do, so I asked him to stop… Me: David, please don’t jump on Mommy. David: Why? Me: Because that hurts Mommy. I’m not wild like you, I’m old. He stops and moves on to something else…a few
David is three, which means this blog is three, too. Just a few days after he was born, in the late morning while he was snoozing beside me in bed I wrote the first post. That’s not entirely true. Tom started it months earlier. He created the URL and wrote the first eight posts chronicling our Fifty
David has taken almost zero naps since he turned three. We still go through the motions, though, every day. After lunch we read a book, turn off the light, close the blackout shades, and I cover him with his blankets just the way he likes it — white blanket first, then green blanket. I give him
Can you tell what Mary Virginia is chewing on? It’s an onion. A raw onion. It’s the raw onion I stashed under her crib to try to heal her ear infection. She found it and walked around the house gnawing on it. Mary Virginia loves raw onions. Every time I slice an onion, she cries
I already mentioned that our vacation was mostly rainy and overcast. In fact, it was SO rainy and overcast, that I can only remember putting sunscreen on my fair-haired, fair-skinned babies a grand total of one time. I know, I know, you can still get burned when it’s cloudy. But when it’s cloudy, raining, and you’re huddled
This silly boy started school last week. My goodness he’s grown so much since last year. He wouldn’t stand still for photos, but I like this next one anyway because you can see his shoes. Just before we walked out the door, David ran to his room and grabbed these shoes. He hasn’t worn them
Last weekend was both my birthday and Labor Day weekend. Wait. No, that’s wrong. It was two weekends ago. Slow down, September. Traditionally, Labor Day marks the end of the summer; pools close, we put away our white pants, and I can commence rolling my eyes at people who actually look forward to fall. But summer can’t
Tom’s parents have a lake house on the same street as the lake house my parents have owned since the 70s. Tom and I were actually dating when his parents bought the property, and when they did we just decided to get married because otherwise it’d be too awkward. When I was a kid, my dad would throw
We’re celebrating this weekend. The sort of celebrating that calls for standing in the front yard wearing a pajama shirt waving a flag. All before 8 a.m. Today is my 32nd birthday and tomorrow the Hokies kickoff their football season. Here’s to the start of a great year. A year in which maybe we’ll get around to
Every now and then, especially when there’s a dog-, um, cat-pile on my couch, I like to remind myself why Brigham is in our family. When Tom and I first got married, our first home was near a lot of restaurants, so we had a few unwelcome cockroaches. We heard that cats could help with cockroaches,
Tom recently had to replace one of the poles for our clothesline, and after the project we had a wheelbarrow full of dirt and gravel in our back yard. And. Well, my kids would sleep out here if I’d let them. David asked me if he could put water in the mud. This kid just
My parents still live in the house I grew up in, and it’s awesome because I get to see my kids exploring the woods I used to explore, swimming in the pool I used to swim in, and sledding down the same hills I used to sled down. And they do things that we never
First, some context. David likes to ask me what people say, what inanimate objects say, or what people are going to say. Then he makes me do a full mock conversation about, for example, what the car in front of us is saying. It’s saying, “You can follow me!” It’s a cute routine, and it can
Mary Virginia took her first steps a while ago. She even started walking, cautiously, earlier this month. But on July 18 we decided she’d officially earned biped status. And all of the sudden she’s saying new words and phrases. She actually says “I want that.” It sounds more like “Iundat” but the connotation is there.
The other night I snuck into Mary Virginia’s room and put a half an onion under her crib. I didn’t tell Tom because I knew he’d think I was crazy. And, ok, I thought it was a little crazy, too. It’s just that she’s been fussy and pulling on her ears and, by now, all
Fanatics, the leading online retailer of officially licensed sports merchandise, invited me to be part of their Future Fanatics campaign to show how the super-fans of tomorrow are getting their start. Fanatics.com has everything from MLB hats to football jerseys from your favorite college team. Or if you still need a World Cup jersey, they’ve got those, too.
I have so many questions about the idyllic 1950s housewife. Is the Betty Draper housewife a myth? Or when husbands came home from work, did their wives really greet them at the door with a kiss wearing heels and lipstick? And then did they all sit down to dinner in their tidy home, with their
Last Sunday we had an unusually hard time getting ourselves and the kids ready for church. By the time we were all dressed and had everyone’s bags packed, and were walking out the door, church had already started. We loaded everyone into the car, and as we drove Tom and I discussed the intricacies of
Two days before Mary Virginia’s birthday, Tom and I were outside cleaning up the back yard and Tom got stung by a bee. Since Tom grew up in a suburban utopia where the only bees were ornamental, it took over 30 minutes for me to convince him that it was, in fact, a bee sting.
To celebrate Mary Virginia’s birthday, I put together a little slideshow of some of my favorite photos and videos from the past year. You can watch it below, or here. There are two things I think of when I watch the slideshow. First, I am woefully out of touch with new music. I think the
Even though Mary Virginia is a freshly-minted one year old, I still think of her as an itty bitty baby. But nothing makes my itty bitty baby seem like a monster, more than seeing her next to an actual newborn. Welcome, Baby Rosie. Mary Virginia would love nothing more than to liberate you from that
Mary Virginia has been doing this for a while now — standing on her own — but capturing it has been maybe my most challenging photography so far. She likes to stand where support (usually my torso) is nearby, and since she’s so close it’s hard to fit her whole body in the frame. Plus,
I’ve been following along with a photo project at Practising Simplicity: A portrait of my children, once a week, every week, in 2014. I take pictures of my kids every week — almost every day — but this is one of the few portraits. This photo captured a unique moment and made me pause. An hour
David finished his first year of preschool last week. Assuming we can get him potty-trained by August, he has two years of preschool left. After that he’ll go to kindergarten, then elementary school, middle school and high school. If he decides to go to college that’s 20 years of school. His time in the classroom
SPRING IS HERE! Let’s all pop a Claritin and go roll around in a bunch of pollen because it’s not going to snow again FOR AT LEAST SIX MONTHS! The transition seasons are wonderful — capricious, but wonderful. And while the chill of fall if foreboding, the warmth of spring is exciting. The only thing
Mary Virginia goes down for her afternoon nap about thirty minutes before David, and she wakes up about thirty minutes before he does. Those two thirty-minute periods are her favorite parts of the day, because while David is sleeping in his room, his toys are all in the living room. Unattended. She always goes straight
This happened a few months ago, but it was such a sweet conversation and I don’t want to forget it. One night, David woke up with a high fever. We took his temperature, gave him medicine, and tried to settle him back to sleep. In the morning, David woke up happy and fever-free. I went
We were trying to get her to say, “21.5 lbs, in size 12-18 month clothes, ten and a half months old.” But this is as far as we’ve gotten. And I suppose it’ll do. For now.