For a very long time, if I was in another room and I heard Mary Virginia start crying, I’d run in, prop my hand on my hip, raise my eyebrows, and say, “David? Why is Mary Virginia crying?” And then, because he is only three years old and needs a bit of time to come up with
Last week, on the morning of New Year’s Eve, I had my 20-week ultrasound, except I was actually 21 weeks. Here’s a funny story, when I went to the OB for my first appointment, I thought I was only eight weeks pregnant. Before I left for the appointment I warned Tom, “There’s a chance I
We didn’t send out a Christmas card this year, but if we had it probably would have looked something like this. And it would say: Merry Christmas from the Kriegers. And then, perhaps on the back, we’d add a blurb telling our family and friends that Tom and I are so excited to announce that we are expecting
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
Back in August, I started doing a monthly memory verse with our kids. I downloaded the printables here, and hung them in my dining room. My approach was casual; my kids are young so I didn’t think it made sense to push too much structure. I was just going to say the verse at the beginning
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
There are times as a parent when you feel like you’re the first parents to ever do something, even though you know it’s not true. Tom and I weren’t the first people to have two children, but when Mary Virginia was born, the waters were so dark and uncharted, that it felt like it. Maybe we weren’t the first
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
David has had a total of two “haircuts” in his life, but he has never had a legitimate capital-H Haircut. This summer his hair got a little long and shaggy, which we thought was cool, except that he had a very important gig as a ring bearer and I wasn’t ok with him walking down
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
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
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
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
Last Wednesday I mostly slept through the night. I woke up completely hung over from all that sleep, but not at all refreshed. Turns out, one night of sleep does not make up waking up at least twice a night for nearly twelve months and the occasional night of nearly no sleep at all. (Starting
We’ve been sick a lot. We’ve been sick so much that I’m even tired of writing about it. Ear infection, flu, fever, blah, blah, blah. We’ve caught every cold, and virus except for one. We have not gotten the stomach bug. All our friends and family have gotten the stomach bug, and we’ve stood like sentinels in
I take my kids to the grocery store about once a week, and it might be the errand that has been most wildly affected by having children. I dread going to the grocery store; every part of it, from making the list to putting the groceries away. And then there’s the actual shopping. Do you know
I got an email the other day from Babycenter.com that said kids should play outside everyday to burn off some energy, and because, “Being outdoors also provides sensory stimulation (the sun, the birds, the dirt) that can’t be replicated indoors.” Great idea, Babycenter.com, but where are you when it’s time to clean up this mess?
Last week Mary Virginia was pummeled with a small fever that turned into a big fever that turned into the sort of fever that bulldozes your backyard to build a strip mall. That sort of fever. You’re probably getting tired of hearing about us getting sick. You and me both. All Mary Virginia wanted was
When we were kids, my dad used to tell us he picked us in a cabbage patch. Good try, Dad. Then why do my knees pop just like yours? And how do you explain my inability to throw away a jar of peanut butter before scraping the ever-loving marrow out of it, thereby slashing my family’s monthly
Albuterol, saline, labeled oral syringes, Azithromycin, Tamiflu, ear-numbing drops, thermometers, acetaminophen dosage chart for quick reference. If I had to choose one photo to sum up fall/winter for our family, this would be it. Usually when one of the kids are teething or has a cough, I keep their medicine on the counter and put
Lately Mary Virginia has been a bit fussier than normal, a bit droolier than normal, and waking a few more times at night than normal. I think — and I say this with all caution — I think she might be teething. She might not be. Any book about babies and development will say that you can
By now, these snow pictures are two snows old. This is before the southern snowstorm that’s currently outside, before the three-inch snow-pacolypse that knocked out our power, left us without internet and cancelled schools for a week, and after the “2014 Cold Wave” better known as the Polar Vortex. This was our first snow, a typical
I recently mentioned that Mary Virginia is squarely in grabbing-mouthing stage. Holding her is like holding an octopus; the moment you break her grip on those tiny hairs at the nape of your neck, she grabs your ear and the next thing you know she’s sucking on your chin. (Until we try to give her
After snapping this photo, I decided to Google, “Is it ok to let a baby chew on Christmas lights?” And that’s exactly when I realized the effect of 24/7, unrestricted access to the world wide web: loss of even a modicum of common sense. The answer? No. No, it’s not ok. Not even a little
The color for the month of November at David’s school is brown. This shirt isn’t exactly brown, but it’s the best we could do. David loves preschool. Loves. I can’t emphasize that enough. He would go to preschool every day for 18 hours if he could. When he’s running away from me in the morning
It feels appropriate to post these photos today — the first day without rain in over a week. It rained every day last week. And even though it hasn’t rained here in maybe months, let’s all agree that a week of rain was a little much. Every day is amplified when you have a toddler.
To uphold my mother’s reputation, I want to start by saying that I grew up in a very anti-TV home. We rarely watched TV as kids. In MY home, however, my son had developed a healthy addiction to Elmo by the time he was 19 months old. Back then David watched TV every now and then, but
Before I had kids I was unsure about a lot of things. I didn’t understand breastfeeding or schedules and had no idea how to bathe a newborn, but there was one thing I knew I would be great at: discipline. I had plenty of practice watching other people do it all wrong. I knew exactly
Part of being the second child is wearing hand-me-downs. Mary Virginia already wears hand-me-downs all the time from friends, her cousins, her brother. This blue sleeper is actually a hand-me-hand-me-hand-me-down. At least two of my sister’s kids wore it before David. And now, even though it’s blue (which ubiquitously means boy in baby language), Mary
David went to his first day of preschool this morning. Each month his class is going to learn a shape and a color. September is red, so he wore his red shirt. The kids weren’t required to wear red, but I’m hoping that it maybe earned him some sort of extra credit. Or maybe he’ll
Mary Virginia is noticing her brother more and more. It’s adorable when she looks at him dancing and jumping and playing and a smile explodes across her face. It’s also adorable when he wants to interact with her and hold her and brings her her pacifier announcing, “Here ya go Mary ‘ginia! Here ya go
There’s a pile of maternity clothes folded on the floor of my bedroom. Even though I’m still shaped like Humpty Dumpty, my maternity clothes don’t fit anymore, so they’re waiting to be sent back to the attic. They’re sitting in my closet, under my regular clothes that don’t really fit either. Ah, postpartum is such
For several days I tried to stage this photo. I wanted them to lay down beside each other on the blanket as a size comparison. It didn’t work. It actually happened once naturally. She was on her blanket and David got on the floor beside her, but by the time I got the camera it
At just five weeks old, Mary Virginia is holding her head up practically as well as David did at three months. Five-week old Mary Virginia: Three-month old David: But David smiled at five weeks, and when she was five weeks old, Mary Virginia was still mostly scowling. This has to mean something, right? Like that
Writing the last part of a birth story is tricky, because everyone already knows the ending. Spoiler alert, here’s how it ends: It’s also hard because, when this was happening I was in a certain amount of…distress? Is that the word? No. Pain? Suffering? No, none of those words are strong enough. I was in
Tom got home from his wild night on the town at 10:42 p.m. I know the exact time because, before he went to bed, he leaned down and woke me up with a kiss on the cheek. I lifted my head from my pillow and said, “Why did you do that? You just woke me
Nine months ago, Tom started getting up with David. He let me sleep an extra half hour or so while they did guy stuff like talk in grunts and leave their underwear on the bathroom floor. Every now and then Tom would have an early meeting or a doctor’s appointment and I didn’t get that
Several of my friends were due with babies in the weeks before my due date, so as I became increasingly pregnant, hormonal, uncomfortable, and anxious to meet my little girl, my Facebook newsfeed was full of new baby girls and boys. There were lots of sibling photos — pictures of big brother or sister meeting the
Mary Virginia Krieger Born right on time, at 10:53 am on June 7, 2013, her due date. 7 lbs., 8 oz., 19 inches. She was born with a full head of black hair, which is why, when they handed her to me, I looked at the doctor and said, “Um. I think I gave birth to
My baby is the size of a watermelon and my due date is on the horizon; just one week away. I know I’ve mentioned this before (so consider this a reminder to myself): this time I’m trying to look beyond the horizon. Even though well-meaning strangers tell me I won’t be late with this baby
My best and dearest and oldest friend has six kids. That means she’s spent over four and a half years of her life pregnant, and for ten years she’s been either pregnant or nursing. She recently said, “I don’t nest. I hibernate.” We don’t agree on everything; she thinks I’m super human because I run
When I wrote this post I forgot one detail about pregnancy. I wasn’t even 30 weeks pregnant when I wrote it, and back then I forgot that you reach a point in pregnancy when you’ll do pretty much anything to just be done already…you’ll even endure the most extreme, the unthinkable…you’ll go through labor and
Summer is finally here. It sort of snuck up on us this year. After weeks of one day in the low 60s and the next in the mid-80s, we’ve started seeing mosquitoes and are appalled at the humidity. Welcome to summer in the south. Yesterday after eating fajitas on the porch, Tom grabbed the hose
When I was pregnant with David, every time I had a doctor’s appointment I’d wear a polyester-blend sundress, preferably sleeveless, with teeny tiny flip flops so that when they weighed me my number wouldn’t include any superflous clothing weight. This time, even though I’m having another summertime baby, it’s been too cold to wear any
I’ve mentioned before that David doesn’t say mama. He doesn’t, but that isn’t the entire story. David CAN say mama, he just won’t. Or, rather, he won’t call me Mama. Usually he doesn’t call me anything, but when he has to he calls me Mommy, which sounds like “Nah-EE”. David also seems to be really
When I look at that belly, all I can think is: no way does that belly have six weeks left. I hate to admit it, but I sort of agree with the lady at the grocery store who wouldn’t believe me when I told her I wasn’t having twins. “Are you sure there aren’t two
I was really looking forward to Easter Sunday. Really, really looking forward to it. But then my son and the rest of my extended family came down with Flu-nami 2013. It hit everyone differently, but it leveled David for six days. It started with vomiting, clinginess and a fever, and ended with diarrhea and grumpiness.
Yesterday, on the second day of spring, Richmond had a surprise morning snow shower. It’s snowed probably three or four times in David’s life, and I’ve never really taken him out in the snow. Boo, hiss, what kind of mother am I? I KNOW! But I have good reasons. Reasons like: when it’s snowing outside,
I never wrote David’s birth story, but here are the Cliffs Notes: My first pregnancy was normal, healthy and relatively easy as far as pregnancies go. (Even though it did go on a little longer than I would have liked…) Labor and delivery was the same. Sure, there were moments of drama (and it went
I really, really planned on swimming laps a lot this pregnancy, but now I’m 27 weeks pregnant and I haven’t been in the pool even once. I have a good reason: we stopped going to the gym around mid-December. I had been going faithfully, but then what happened? Oh, that’s right, every time we even