If you happen to see Mary Virginia anytime soon, make sure to compliment her on her newly erupted lower incisors. She’s been working on them for several agonizing weeks, and now that they’re here, they’re her greatest accomplishment. Or maybe mine. If you’ve ever read any of Mary Virginia’s updates, you can guess what I’m about
Last week Mary Virginia turned 22 months old. I think it’s been my favorite month yet, and I’m not just saying that because I’ve gotten more sleep in the past month than I have since she was born. It’s not the only reason, but it’s certainly ONE of the reasons. Before you assume that the earth has fallen
These posts are getting harder and harder to write, and it’s not just because I’m getting lazier with each passing month. It’s because Mary Virginia as grows, she’s becoming more singular and harder to articulate. There are two things on my mind as I finally sit down to write this update, almost two weeks after she turned
Here we are, it’s February 17, and Mary Virginia is 20 months, one week and three days old. I thought about just skipping this month — I’ve done it before — but then I realized it would be a mistake. Blogging is getting harder; I have less free time during the day by and when the kids are
Every night before I go to bed, I make sure my slippers, robe, and fleece pants are right by my bed. Last week I realized, this is the milestone I can’t wait for. I’m can’t wait for the night I go to sleep without first preparing to spend a significant part of the night awake. When Mary Virginia wakes up
This has been a tough month. That’s why this update is more than two weeks late. I just considered skipping another month. But, last night, I decided to write it — bursting with whining and complaining — so that next month I can just bypass all that and tell you about the wonderful things my
Mary Virginia is sixteen months old. If you’re a careful reader you might have noticed that I didn’t write a fifteen-month update. I’ve been late with updates before, but I’ve never completely skipped one. I’ve justified it, though. After all, we’ve been busy, I spent most of last month recovering from summer travel. Most importantly, Mary Virginia is my
To be totally accurate, the title of this post should be 37.5 months, because that’s how old David is. I meant to write this when David turned three, back on August 16, but things are still running a bit behind around here. David will forgive me, I hope, especially since one of huge reasons it’s
Last week, on the day Mary Virginia turned 14 months old, we were at the park. Mary Virginia climbed up the steps to a slide, and by the time I noticed, she was on her way down the slide, all by herself. And, ok, maybe I should have been watching her a little more closely,
Month thirteen has been chock-full of milestones.The biggest milestone, the one at the top of the pile, above all the waving and talking and starting to walk, is our very first road trip without Daddy. It was only a three-hour drive, and we brought 18 pounds of animal-shaped carbohydrates to make the trip possible, but
Earlier this month we ordered a new car seat for Mary Virginia and after I placed the order, I half expected a reply email from Amazon saying, “Um, are you sure you need this already? Didn’t you have this baby like yesterday?” No, I didn’t. In fact, that baby is now a year old. This
Sometimes, to help me write these monthly posts, I make notes throughout the month. Babies change so much from day to day that it’s easy to forget things. So I make notes: Mary Virginia climbed up on the couch all by herself, Mary Virginia’s favorite food is black beans, Mary Virginia squeals when she doesn’t
If you search for the word “sick” on this blog, here are a few of the results: Mary Virginia’s nine month update Mary Virginia’s eight month update Mary Virginia’s seven month update Mary Virginia’s six month update Enough already. I’m not going to talk about sickness or having fevers, even though that’s probably the thing
Mary Virginia is 9 months old. Actually, she’s 9 months, one week and four days old. If you’re wondering why this post is so late, it’s because the east coast of the United States of America celebrated daylight savings time right after she turned nine months. That means we lost an hour, which means the
Mary Virginia is eight months old. It seems unbelievable to me because when she was a newborn, I assumed that by now I’d have my act together. Floors vacuumed, regular showers, dinner on the table at a reasonable time. And all I can think about is that most working moms get 12 weeks of maternity
Don’t take this the wrong way, Month Seven, but you were not our favorite. You were supposed to be festive and fun, but you were rude, vindictive and selfish. Sure, there were bright spots. There were Christmas dresses and family sleepovers and eight loaves of cinnamon bread; but it was all enjoyed through the grey
Mary Virginia turned 6 months old over a week ago. In this case, it’s a good thing this post is late because if I wrote it on time I wouldn’t have been able to include that, just a few days after her 6-month birthday, Mary Virginia started crawling. Her crawling is slow and deliberate. She
I feel like we’re standing on the edge of a cliff. Mary Virginia is five months old. Next month we’ll start solids, she’ll sit up, soon enough she’ll be crawling and then she’ll move out and start screening my calls. Last month I thought we’d reached the cute, cuddly, roly-poly baby stage, but this month
We’ve seen some big changes this month. For starters, my hair started falling out. It’s happening a lot earlier than it did last time. Meanwhile, Mary Virginia continues to get even sweeter and more delightful every day. Yesterday I had to take David to the doctor, and Tom stayed home with Mary Virginia. I called to
Mary Virginia graduated. She’s three months old. That means she’s no longer a newborn; she’s officially a baby. When David was an infant I’d heard so much about the changes babies go through at three months that I was disappointed when he finally got there. The problem was that I set my expectations too high. I
David turned two years old last Friday, and the weekend before we had a little birthday party for him. It was small, mostly family and a few friends. We ordered pizza and made cupcakes. It was nothing like last year, when I stayed up late looking at sailboats on Pinterest, made the most complex cake
If you happen to ask me how Mary Virginia is doing, I’ll most certainly answer by telling you how she slept the night before. And the answer will be either “horrible” or “amazing” because with a newborn, there is no in between when it comes to sleep. With a newborn, you either wake up celebrating
The first month is a blur of sleep deprivation and wonder at bright eyes and itty bitty everything. This baby girl? She’s so beautiful. Mary Virginia has spent her first month finding her thumb and holding her head up remarkably high for her age. She performs both skills as well as most two-month olds, so
David thought I was boring before, but even he wasn’t prepared for the level of lethargy I’ve reached after 37 weeks of pregnancy. The only games I want to play are “let’s lay on the bed and pretend to sleep” and “go to Starbucks and get Mama a Java Chip Frappuccino.” David will play “sleeping” for
David is 20 months old. Twenty months. It’s a milestone I never thought we’d reach because, even though these months are flying, now that I’m pregnant I count my life in weeks. David will be about 21 and a half months when Baby Krieger gets here, which, now that he’s 20 months, sounds so soon.
This month was a big month for David. It was maybe, in a toddler’s economy, the biggest month. This month, David met Elmo. I’m not sure how or when he saw Elmo for the first time, all I know is that suddenly David started asking for Elmo. This might also be a good time to
The funny thing about these updates is that the tone is totally set by the week the update happens to fall on. For example, this month has been amazing. Then last week, David started growing fangs. Some people call them incisors, but these are fangs. All these teeth? They aren’t worth it. Not one bit.
This is the difference between a baby and a toddler. When you have a baby, and the baby falls a few inches off the couch, you have a panic attack, call your husband in tears, and write a blog about it. When you have a toddler and the toddler smacks his head into a cinder
December has been hard on David. Balls, by far, are his favorite toy, and all December he’s been told that he can’t touch the balls that are glittery, shiny, lit up, made of glass and hung on trees at his eye level. He’s broken two ornaments so far. Neither of them were ours because David
David just turned fifteen months old and, I don’t know, this one might not make it into the baby book. This month we’ve coined the nickname Grumpelstiltskin because it’s cuter than any other expletive that comes to mind when he’s scratching his eyes out because we’re changing his diaper. I’m blaming all this moodiness on
I’ve been counting down the days to David’s fourteen month birthday for a while now. There isn’t any sort of milestone or celebration, but I went over my texts this month and my plan happens to reset on the same day as David’s fourteen month birthday. For a while now every text I’ve sent or
I know, I know. I’m almost half-a-month late with this one. If I had been this late with his one-month update, that would have meant I had been procrastinating for a third of his life. But now that we count his age in years, two weeks seems like nothing, because nowadays two weeks seem to
A professor in one of my writing classes once told me you should never use cliches, and if anyone has ever said it before, it’s a cliche. But in this case, I have to. WHERE DID THIS YEAR GO? To be completely honest, sometimes I feel like this year has been a thousand years long.
Every month after I write an update I’m haunted for days by things I wish I’d included. Last month I forgot to mention that his favorite place to be tickled is his thighs and that at bedtime, instead of hugging me and leaning into my chest as I sing a lullaby, he now hurls his
David turned 10 months old, um, four days ago. This is the latest I’ve ever been with a monthly update, and it’s a far cry from when I wrote his one-month update three days early. I like to think the change is because I’ve stopped wishing the days away and started enjoying, no, savoring time
Since sharing all his business on the Internet has already bought David, at the worst, years of therapy and, at the very best, lots and lots of eye rolling, I’m just going to go ahead and throw caution to the wind here. Internet, I give you David’s most noticeable development this past month: We’ve introduced
Last Monday while I was busy polishing my “Mother of the Year” trophy, David fell off the couch. Actually, I was right there. My hand was on him and he lunged off the couch head first. Doesn’t that make it worse? If I can’t keep him on the furniture while under my complete supervision, then
Last night when I reminded Tom that today was David’s seven-month birthday he said exactly what I was thinking, “No way.” Way. The calendar doesn’t lie. Some months have seemed to drag. Like month 3. Or month 5. But this one came out of no where and popped us on the noggin. Babies are fickle,
This month almost killed me. I know I’ve said that before, but this time it was for an entirely different reason. This time I’m beginning to realize that when you decide to have a child, you’re signing up for thanking Jesus every night that you made it through one more day. I’ve stopped waiting for
This month almost killed me. The sleep deprivation beat me to the bottom of a hole and had me begging for mercy. I had lunch with a friend one day and had the following conversation: Friend: So we traded in our car for a Pittance. Me: A Pittance? Nice. And who makes the Pittance again?
David is four months old today. After spending so much time waiting and wishing for the big three month milestone, it seems four months came in a flash. Is this what moms talk about when they say babies grow up too fast? Or maybe it’s just the Christmas season. Yes, that must be it. He’s
We did it. We survived the fourth trimester. Our baby is three months old. Oh, David, don’t look so surprised. I’ve been waiting for this milestone. Anticipating. Dreaming. Imagining. There’s lots of hype about having a three-month old. First I read my sister’s take on three months. Then I stumbled across rumors on the Internet
Our little guy is two months old. Well, maybe I shouldn’t say little. He does weigh 13.2 lbs, wears 3-6 month clothes, and is in the 90th percentile for height and weight. When people see him, they always guess that he’s 3 months old. (At what age does that stop? When I look big people
What a difference a month makes. Four weeks ago today I was very grumpy, very pregnant, and relatively certain my pregnancy was a permanent condition (which I think every woman starts wondering somewhere around 39 weeks). (grumpy? yes.) I was particularly irritable toward people who suggested I eat at a certain restaurant, see a certain