I have a sweetheart

There are a lot of valentines in my life nowadays.

Used to be there were even more, back in the elementary school days when every kid in your class let you know "You're rad" or "URAQT!" via paper valentines with Scooby Do on the front. Then it slowly got narrowed down to one Valentine, or maybe none.

For five years in a row Tim was the only one. He still is if you get technical I guess. And I love him so, so much. But I also really love these two little valentines.

Boys and dolls

Mason loves building dump trucks and excavators out of his legos. He calls them excabaders. And actually, he loves it the most when I build them for him. I am so good at building dump trucks out of giant legos, AND he has been using my original excavator design in all of his excavator creations since then. I had no idea what an excavator was before I had a two-year-old boy.

He can correctly identify a hammer, a hammer drill, a drill, and screwdriver and a sawzall.

Today he about went nuts when someone stole his soccer ball at the gym, and he pitches lefty.

This is all to say... he likes boy stuff, k?!

He also really likes dolls. Loves them.

He found this doll with a stained bum at a cousin's house and snuck it to our house and he loves that baby so much. He cuddles it in his blanket (he even shares the good corner). He makes sure it doesn't have a fever. He nurses it. Yes, pulls up his shirt and presses its face to his chest. It's totally normal. Don't worry about it.

(This is not baby - this was a convenient substitute.)

Tim caught baby in the time-out corner the other day. Guess she did something pretty naughty.



A first birthday bash

My baby girl, who has actually been a full-on toddler for a while now, turned a year-old yesterday. That's all I can really say about it. Because when I talk about it too much, it may or may not make me cry. It may. It will.

Girl, please. Pull yo self together.



Holly Jolly

We had a most merry Christmas! It was preceded by a week of a serious cold for Mason and I (which has now taken up permanent residency in our chests, I'm afraid) but it was great anyway. I got just about everything on my list and I got to spend so much time with my wonderful family and it's warm in my house even though it's cold outside and last night Mason said his prayers all by himself. So basically, life is so good.

29

My husband has now been alive twenty-nine years and one day. Yesterday we celebrated the last birthday he'll probably want to admit.

Today I was thinking about him and how he's old and I'm still so way young, and it made me think of when we were dating long distance and did most of our flirting via e-mail. I went back and read a few of those old e-mails and boy, were we cheesy! I was very clearly smitten and things have really not changed much... just a couple of kids and a lot more love. He's still the honest, hard-working, smart, funny, sexy man I knew when he was just 21.

Enjoy your twenties, Tim!