at 19 months and 3 months old time with my little ones is a combination of dizzyingly fast and paint dryingly slow. in general the weeks zoom by at an alarming rate and looking at my wide eyed smiling daughter i can’t believe she’s 3 months old, today. in contrast, yesterday harper was on a sleep strike and wanted to be in my arms, preferably at my breast, all day (we’re going on day 4 of nursing non-stop/3 month growth spurt), jackson had lunch at 10:30am because the morning was going by that slowly and i was done with dishing out snacks every 30 seconds. by the time justin got home at 5:09pm (with a bottle of wine in hand, thank god) it felt like years had passed since he left home at 9am that morning. in honor of these fleeting weeks and painstakingly slow moments, here are some of the latest happenings in our household:

-          harper has decided that these people staring at her, making funny faces and sounds are actually quite amusing and is smiling, cooing and raspberrying back at us.

november 09 - 11 wks

-          she tries like hell to tame her unruly hands and fingers as they fly around her face, tantalizing her mouth with tempting suck-able digits and leaving red scratches (without fail and no matter how short the nail) all over.

-          jackson, at just 19 months, is a total motor mouth. he repeats everything we say, most recently, “toddage cheese” at lunch yesterday.

-          other recent words include: coffee, hot, cold, burrrrr (along with body shiver), shrek (a daily watch), boot BALL, toes, fingers, pipe (when listening to water running through them), treat, choochoo, pain (pen), dip (ketchup/hummus), animals of all kinds, broch-lee, touch down, throw (yes, there seems to be a sports-related theme going on), well-wo, red, blue, geen, moon, sky…

-          in general, jackson’s world has totally opened up; he is taking words and objects that he’s known for months and understanding how they apply to life. example: we were up in new hampshire for thanksgiving and mimi brought jackson outside bundled in blankets to look at the moon. although jackson can point to the moon in books, he’d never seen it in real life. watching the connection as he peered at the glowing moon was priceless. since then moon spotting has become a regular activity.

-          harper has been getting nightly (or there about) baths along side her brother (in her little bath) and actually going to sleep in a bassinet in our room. typically, she’ll sleep for 4-5 hours that first stretch. (woowhooooo!)

-          after that initial stretch of 4-5 hours she nurses/sleeps along side me for the duration of the night. i feel totally torn as i love the closeness but feel guilty for enabling a potentially hard-to-break habit (totally blog-worthy topic in and of inself).

-          justin and i desperately need a night with no kids and too much booze.

-          jackson’s newest hobby: carrying the contents of the lazy susan and spice cabinet into the living room (why he is just now discovering this is beyond us…)

-          current jax obsessions include: watching shrek, bootBALL (football), bugs (he remembers where he saw them and will continuously point to the spot and talk about it), rolling around on the floor with dada, antagonizing bayla, taking his socks off, watching us use the potty but refusing to himself (we’ve reverted in the potty training arena), pointing, poking and naming harper’s eyes, nose, ears, mouth, toes, knees, fingers, etc., seeing harper and yelling, “HIII!”, owls (there’s a plastic one at mimi’s house & we’ve been watching them on youtube), scouring our yard and neighbor’s yards for lawn mowers (getting to sit on them is a huge bonus)

november 09 - 18 mos

-          justin turned 30 and we had a great party for him. he is now officially robbing the cradle. on a side note, he has been lifting/working out for a few months and is big, bulky and sex-ay.

-          i am officially feeling the effects of being pregnant and mommy-ing for two years. in dire need of a shopping spree, haircut & color, and feeling pretty again. sex-ay’s got a long way to go to get back .

-          harper’s got so many cute clothes that some days i play dress up and change her just because.

-          when jackson picks up a phone he has pretend conversations with joe (both neighbors are named joe and he loves to talk about them). we’re pretty sure that he thinks every man other than dada and grandpa are named joe.

-          jackson has discovered the photos on our walls. he loves to point out the people that he knows. favorites include: mimi, nana, grandpa, dada, momma, bayla.

-          any middle aged women he sees with blonde hair is mimi or nana

-          harper loves watching the whirlwind that is her brother. she smiles at him and tolerates his poking, prodding and clumsy toddler ways.

i am realizing that i could go on forever…but will stop here. obviously, i have much to be thankful for this year. happy december, christmas here we come.