Choo choo

Not enough warmth to be outside. Not enough time to tackle a museum. What to do on this Sunday afternoon (before the Superbowl, of course)? I'm so glad it came to me...the Choo-choo restaurant in Des Plaines. This is only the 2nd time we've been there. I don't know why we don't go more often (although, it would make it less special if we did), and why there aren't more places like this old gem.

This was Allie's first time, and she was as excited about the trains delivering everyone's food as she was about her ice cream after lunch:

And after a delicious meal, they got to ride on the train engine for as long as they wanted.

On the way home Alice kept saying, "Choo choo. Fun. Ye-yo bus (what she called the train she rode on). Fun." She was right. It WAS fun. The perfect thing to do today.

Ice Cream

Alice LOVES ice cream- That I knew before, BUT I had no idea how hilarious she'd be when she had her first bowl of ice cream all to herself. I don't know if she knew that you lick ice cream CONES, or that she simply couldn't bite such big pieces of it, but her little tongue just licked each spoonful. It was hilarious. This happened at the Longhorn on Saturday, but I had to see if she'd do it again. Sure enough, she did. But as you'll see on the video, she thought about it and decided at the end that she'd like her ice cream to be "cut." That's the last thing she says.

Ice Cream from Becky Wilcox O'Hearn on Vimeo.

"OH NO...COLOR!"

I am thrilled to see Alice starting to really act like a little girl. She just LOVES to walk around with as many stuffed animals as she can get her little arms around, squeezing them and kissing them, and cooing at them in a soft little voice. Recently, she's taken a liking to her baby dolls. Her babies consist of a Raggedy Ann doll and two Cabbage Patch dolls--Talk about old school babies, right? I love it.

She loves to push her babies around in the little stroller and pretend to feed them. And now she has discovered that the Cabbage Patch dolls (one of which is mine from when I was a kid) have diapers on, so she decided that they always need to be changed. She says, "Pee-pee... Diaper change," and proceeds to try to get their diapers off.

Yesterday, she was playing with the babies while I was making dinner, and I heard her say, "Oh no...COLOR!"...which is what she says when she has colored on something she's not supposed to. I jumped up and ran over to see what she had done, and there she was, staring at her Cabbage Patch's butt....For anyone who never owned a Cabbage Patch, it is Xavier Roberts' signature. To this day, I'm still not sure who Xavier Roberts is and WHY he had to tattoo his name on every baby in the caggage patch, but even Alice knew that was a NO-NO. I'm just hoping it doesn't give her any ideas!

January Reflection

It seems I've had a LOT of time indoors to sit back (not really relax, but) reflect on this month. Here is what I've learned:

1. Having the house on the market really sucks. It means having to keep the house clean, declutter in any and every way possible, and having to be out of the house for showings and open houses. On one hand I want to sell our house, and I want it as presentable as possible, but I am really getting stressed out. I mean, when you have two children who literally follow you as you clean and proceed to dump out the basket of toys you just put away, it gets kind of old. Of course, in the end, I LOVE having a clean, uncluttered house. It's good for me to have to keep random piles of mail, clothes, shoes, and other junk from piling up. And when we ever DO get a new house, I keep telling myself that I'll have to pretend it's on the market to keep myself so disciplined.

A few things we did recently to help sell our house is put a fresh coat of paint in the bedroom and bathrooms, and switching our bedroom with Jack's. It was sad to cover the artwork that my mother-in-law, sister-in-law and I did for Jack's nursery before he was born, but it had to be done. No more clouds on the ceiling...BUT, just look at the difference.

Front bedroom before:

Front bedroom after (Now our bedroom):

Second bedroom after- Which is now Jack's room (I couldn't even take a before picture because our bed took up the whole room!)

The other nice thing about this change is that Jack and Alice's rooms are connected now, which has been nice for them to open the door and play between both rooms. That leads me to the 2nd thing I've observed this month:

2. Jack and Alice really like each other...MOST of the time. This is a wonderful new chapter in motherhood. For one, it gives me more time to watch them entertain each other rather than having to always BE the entertainer. Also, I just love that Jack really likes his sister. He keeps asking her if she wants to play with him, and he shows her how to play. He gives her a car and tells her how to race it, boosts her up on my bed so they can bother the slumbering cat together, and he even tries to play hide and seek with her (although not very successfully). Alice really likes her brother now too. She used to just scream when he came near, because most of the time he'd come and hug her so hard around her head that she'd fall down. =) She affectionately calls him "Jackie" and always wants to give him kisses goodnight, and she of course always wants to do what he's doing. This makes me very happy and makes me try to remember that...

3.Life is so very very precious. On a very sad note, Jamie's sisters in Florida lost a very dear friend, David, this month. David was married to Jamie's sister Jennifer in 2006. It was the most beautiful wedding I've ever been to. Unfortunately, the marriage didn't work out, but David remained close to Jamie's other sister Bess and her husband, and had made amends with Jennifer. He was flying in a small plane back from the Bahamas when it went down. He was the pilot. I had gotten to know him well enough that I could tell that he was a great guy. He was a wonderful father and a very giving person. He was always smiling and laughing too. He'll be missed terribly. I can't stop thinking about him and his 3 sons, as well as Jamie's sisters and their family. Their lives are all turned upside down, and they are simply crushed by this loss. So, to keep this positive, in his passing I have been trying to remind myself just how precious each and every day is and how blessed and lucky I am to have all the great people who are in my life. They can be gone in a blink of an eye. I think David was a "Live life to its fullest" kind of guy, and I know he'd want everyone he left behind to do the same. Hopefully, his loved ones will be able to heal so that they can do that for him. And in the same light that good can come from tragedy, I realized that

4. People are GOOD. We come together when others are in dire need. The Haiti earthquake was horrifying. It is inconceivable to me, yet it hit very close to home on so many levels. So many stories have come from this. One, who happens to be Jamie's second cousin's family, had a son and daughter there. Their son was visiting their daugther who was doing some kind of selfless and ministry work. Their daughter was injured in the quake, but their son did not survive. I couldn't even imagine.
My college friend Courtney, who has talked about two people who are directly involved in the disaster in her blog. Robin is a girl I knew from our sorority. She had left before the quake, but went back immediately afterwards to help. The other girl, Molly, is Robin's friend. As you'll see in the last post from a family member, Molly did not survive. Too many didn't. BUT....the homeless, injured, sick, and starving people who DID survive NEEDED US. THEY WILL CONTINUE TO NEED US for a long time. They have lost EVERYTHING. They probably feel like their world has come to an end--Enter humanity and the goodness of people's hearts. The doctors, nurses, priests, and thousands of other volunteers who flocked to their rescue are true saints. The families adopting Haitian children without any hesitation are absolute heroes. So selfless and loving. And the amount of money that everyone around the world is giving warms my heart. Even in this recession, even with everyone pinching pennies, we don't even question and we give. We can help build them back up, and maybe even give them a better life than they had before the earthquake. It will take time. Money. Effort. Prayers. But hopefully, we will not forget them in a few months and keep helping them. And we should always remember how good WE have it.
So, as I turn the calendar over to February, I look forward to 3 things: More help for Haiti, more days outside, and a contract on our house (please, please, please!!!). Fingers crossed.

My First Letter

Yesterday, I found an envelope in Jack's backpack that was addressed to "Mommy (written by an adult)" from "Jack (written by Jack)" with a sticker in the corner for a stamp. I opened it up, expecting to receive another cute scribbly drawing, but instead I got this: It says, "Mommy's best friend Jack." "You." "It's just a short little story." "I have to clean up my toys." I couldn't contain myself. It made me so happy. I hugged and kissed him a million times. I think he got the picture that I liked it. Maybe a part of it is because I help my own students write these types of things day in and day out and think how wonderful it must make their mommies and daddies feel when they get them; or maybe it's because MY BABY wanted to write me a note at school. And he did. Either way,
I LOVE IT. Oh, how I hope he'll write me more...many, many more.

Beating the Winter Blues

It's already been a long January. The bitter cold has kept us from doing much outside (I'm kind of a wuss when it comes to being cold). Luckily, I've thought up a few things to keep us all busy and happy indoors.
One of my better ideas was SOUPer SUNDAY. Kerry and Erin came over the Sunday after New Years, and we made big batches of soup- Yummy, delicious, hearty and warm soups. It started because I had a whole chicken and Kerry mentioned that she had a ham hock, so I told her to come over and we'd make soup together; but I think we should plan to this again next January, if not sooner! There is just nothing better than a steaming bowl of homemade soup on a freezing, snowy day.Alice thoroughly enjoyed all of the soups throughout the week --To the point that she needed TWO spoons

Then we brought out the Thomas tunnel. It was not very popular with J and A until now. Maybe now that Alice will actually play in it with Jack it's more appealing, because it has resulted in hours of fun...Not to mention the laughs we get when our hair stands straight up from the static.

Then there's game night: Santa brought Jack Candyland, but it wasn't the original Candyland. It was the Sweet Celebrations version, which looked so cool because it had 3 dimensional little lands to go to where you pick up treats at each land. Well, as my mother wrote in a little note she stuck on the board one day after watching the kids: "Way to ruin a perfectly good and simple game, Hasbro! Boo! Hiss!" It's terrible. The pieces don't stay together making it impossible to play without having to re-fix all the pieces every two minutes. I am seriously considering writing a letter to the makers and telling them to (A.) Take this toy off the market, and (B.) Give me my money back. We'll see. Anyway, that didn't stop game night from happening with a good old-fashioned game of Go fish! We all love playing this.

And of course, there's always play dough, but this was one of the first times that they both were engaged in it for more than 5 minutes. I was able to make dinner in peace!
Finally, on Saturday I asked Jack if he wanted chocolate chip pancakes, thinking he'd jump up and down with excitement. His reply was, "I have an even better idea...How about BLUEBERRY pancakes?!" Thankfully, I had blueberries too. So...we made them.

And of course, Alice ATE them.

I sure hope the rest of the month doesn't drag like this. We have relisted our house though, so we're painting, moving stuff around, and hopefully...hopefully going to be buying a new house in the coming months!! I won't get ahead of myself though.

The Joy of Christmas

Christmas was broken up into so many little gatherings that for once I actually felt like I had time to enjoy it all. I didn't feel like it flew by at all. It's been a great couple of weeks.

It all began at Kerry's for the adult only Christmas party the Friday before Christmas. My mom added a little fun to it by turning it into a murder mystery. So, we drank, ate, opened our gifts, and tried to figure out which of us was a killer! It was so funny, especially because my brother and his wife came in full character (it was Western-themed, and Joe's character was the sheriff and Hildy worked in the brothel!). We laughed, we talked with silly southwest accents, and we really enjoyed the kid-less evening. And, in case you cared, Hildy WAS the murderer!
Then, on Christmas Eve we had a kids' lunch party at Joe and Hildy's. This was so perfect for them. The older kids played together on their own, and Kerry, Hildy, and I sat back and relaxed with the 2 girls . We had lunchand then each kid gave one cousin a gift. Jack was very excited that he had a special present for Wyatt, just as Wyatt was excited for Jack We really wanted to stress the act of giving more than receiving, and it was so much nicer for us all rather than the madness of a million presents for every kid. And that one present meant so much more: Later, my brother surprised them and showed up at the door in a Santa suit, which was quite a treat. It was funny though, because Wyatt looked at him and in a quivering, kind of uncertain voice said, "Hi....Daddy?" Maddy and Hannah also knew who he was, but strangely my kids and Kerry's kids had NO CLUE it was Joe.

On to the real meaning of Christmas. We went to Christmas Mass, and it was simple, to the point, and quick. Not too exciting, I'll admit, but it was ideal for us for this year at least. While I LOVE all the songs, and the music that Christmas Eve mass can be (especially when I was a kid and we had pageants and I got to be an angel one year), it would really have been too much for a 3 and a 1 year old.
Afterwards, we were off to my parents' for our traditional fancy beef tenderloin meal. It was very nice, but again, will be much nicer and easier when the kids are a little bit older. I would have loved to chat more with my grandma and my uncle Dennis, who only visits once or twice a year. We had a few presents to give our parents and the kids, and then it was off to bed to await Santa!

Christmas morning was by far my favorite part of the the entire holiday. It was low-key, relaxing, and just the 4 of us enjoying our family. Jack got the whole Santa thing this year. Last year he was scared to come downstairs because he thought Santa was still there and apparantly that terrified him. After finally waking up at 8:00 (Jamie and I were literally laying in our beds waiting for them to wake up!), he eagerly came downstairs and said, "He came! He got me the silver train! He ate the cookies!" And Alice got a little stroller, which she loves. Of course it didn't take her long to decide that SHE wanted to be pushed in it.

I loved the calmness and the quality family time. Then it was on to the O'Hearn's for dinner and more family fun. Jamie and Mike always put on a good show:

And Jack has followed suit with the entertainment as well!

He had Tom rolling on the floor while they sat at their little table for two. My mother-in-law set the table with those electric tea lights and little goblets that Jamie and his siblings used to drink out of at fancy dinners. It was so cute. They even did a toast. Bompa bought Alice a Ragedy Ann doll, and for Gram-O, Jack and Alice painted pictures and I framed some photos that Jack took.

Overall, we had yet another wonderful, family-filled, fun-filled holiday. We are so blessed and rich with family members and friends who love us and who we love so dearly. I could not ask for more, but just to have it all again next year.