Thankful Turkey

Thankful Turkey, originally uploaded by Jmelee.

This year Alex is thankful for:
- Paper
- Suckers
- Turkey
- Mommy, Daddy and Brother
- Crayons
- His blankie
- the laundry (I don't know why)
- His eyes

Giving thanks

What sucks:
The dog ate the passenger side seatbelt in the car and we can't afford to get it fixed.

I'm thankful...
..that we have six other seatbelts in the car, four of which are available for me to use.

What sucks:
Our health insurance costs THREE TIMES what we used to pay and because of that we are completely broke.

I'm thankful...
..that we have insurance so that we can keep our family as healthy as possible

What sucks:
I can't seem to find a job

I'm thankful...
...for all the time I get to spend being home full time with my boys

What sucks:
We can't afford to go to Utah to be with our families for the holidays

I'm thankful...
...that I will be with the three most important people in the world for the holidays

What sucks:
We can't afford to buy presents this year

I'm thankful...
...that this year I can show my children that presents aren't what make the holidays special.

What sucks:
My hair and those stupid bangs I had cut in Septmeber

I'm thankful...
...that I have hair and I'm not suffering from Alopecia

:::

I'm thankful for my husband who is truly my perfect match.  It's been an eight years long love affair with no signs of cooling off yet!

I'm thankful for my Alex who changed my life and redefined the word LOVE for me.

There is not a single day that goes by that I don't look at Max's beautiful face and know exactly how lucky I am to have him. He will always be my miracle boy.

I am thankful that we've been able to give Fancy a home, and I do love her, despite her seatbelt eating ways.

I am thankful that Kitty (aka Maxine) is still in good health even though she was one of the first mammals to evolve in the early Jurrasic period. She will probably outlive us all.

Video

Random bullets

• Alex can zip up his own coat now. For some reason this is completely freaking me out. He's just a BABY! He shouldn't know how to zip up his coat! I've been treating it like a really cool parlor trick, showing anyone who will watch. Look! The coat is open, then all you have to do is say the magic words "Alex, zip up your coat please" and voila! Zipped up!


• Max is now what Alex calls a "walking talking baby".  His verbal skills are similar to what Alex's were at 2 years old. I can hardly believe it.  I mean, he still sounds like a baby, I imagine if you weren't around him all the time and came to spend the afternoon, you wouldn't understand most of what he says, but with me anyway, he communicates verbally and effectively. I remember this age being so difficult with Alex because the communication just wasn't there, it was all grunts and pointing or all out screaming, but with Max, he can tell you what he wants "bobble! Apple ju juice bobble!" (A bottle with apple juice) or "min min peeze" (I would like my vitamin please) or "SHOES! SHOES! SHOES!" (I would very much enjoy wearing this fine pair of shoes).  He knows how to make his words into a question. "Daddy?" with his little hands upturned is him wondering where his daddy went.  or "Buddy do pee pee?" Where's Alex? Is he in the bathroom?  He is so quickly turning into a little boy I'm almost afraid to blink or I'll miss it.


• We're starting to get out a bit more and meet people. I've joined a few local meetup groups, and so far they're promising. Really cool people, fun activities on the calendar, lots of little playmates for the boys.  When I first signed up for them, John was reluctant.  I was really excited about one group that was geared toward geeky/nerdy/gamer/sci fi/comic book parents and he thought they'd be too nerdy.  This made me laugh. John, the man who dedicated an entire room in his basement to Star Wars, thinking other people were too nerdy.  They weren't too nerdy at all, they were really cool, as I expected them to be, and we plan to go to a lot more meetups with them in the future.


• All three of the boys were able to get H1N1 shots this week because all three of them fall into high risk groups that are currently being vaccinated in our area.  Sadly, I'm too healthy to get vaccinated at this time.  It probably doesn't even matter anyway because I'm pretty sure I've already had the swine flu over the summer anyway.  But I'm relieved that the boys will be protected.  Now I can relax about that and find new and interesting ways to trigger my panic attacks.


• I'm sucking at NaNoWriMo. I've got just over 3000 words and, well, that's REALLY behind. My biggest problem is sticking with my story.  I'll be into writing one story and another will come to mind that sounds better, so I'll scrap what I've written and start over, or completely change the plot to accommodate the new idea, and it's just making me write in circles. I'm going to chug through it though, I probably won't meet my 50,000 word goal, but it will be a great learning excercise for me to try to just follow through on ONE story at least.


• I'm still trying to jog, I haven't the last few days because we've been busy, in fact our whole month is filling up with dr appointments and playdates but I know I've just got to schedule time to run and make it happen.  I still hate it.  But I still want to run a 5k more than I don't want to train to run a 5k.  So, there's that.