“I want my money today! It’s my money. I want it right now!” yelled one former campaign worker.

Not breaking promises already, are we?

In other news, my new t-shirt should be here any day now:

The pool party for Ian’s 5th birthday was a lot of fun.  After the swimming, we adjourned to the party room for pizza and cake, where Shannon stood by her big brother’s side as the song was sung, eagerly awaiting her turn at the cake.  Which she kept repeating, just so everyone would know what she wanted: “Cake?  Cake?  Cake?”

Dear Ian,

Happy Birthday!  I’m so proud of you and I can’t wait to see how you develop and grow during your 6^th year.  May your year be filled with many joys, a few challenges, and opportunities for growth and triumph.  I’ll be with you every step.

Love, Mom

In three days I’ll be going under the knife.  While this is a minor surgery, it’s still surgery requiring general anesthesia and an overnight stay at the hospital, and I find myself nervous.  I continue to marvel at how my outlook has changed since having children.  Now that I have two little people depending on me, I’m so much more anxious about the possibility of something going wrong.  Naturally, I didn’t want anything to happen to me when I was a single woman, but as a wife and mother the stakes are so much higher.  It’s not just about me anymore.  Yes, of course I’ve always had family and friends who cared what happened to me…but it is different when young children are part of the equation.

Lest this post verge off any further into gloomy territory, I must remember that I’m having this surgery to correct a condition that impairs my day to day functioning, and that, if left untreated, could have serious long-term health ramifications.  So really, I’m doing this to benefit myself and my family in the short-term and in the long run.  I’ll just remind myself of what I’m telling the kids—it’s no big deal, and mommy will be back home the next day.  And I’ll stop thinking about those explicitly-worded informed consent and living will forms that they sent me.

It takes a few seconds for them to get rolling:

I haven’t done very well at keeping the kids’ baby books updated, so I’m going to post a few notes here on the fly, just so I don’t forget.

Things I Want to Always Remember:

The look on the boy’s face as he doggy-paddled by himself for the first time in the pool.  Joy, pride, a tiny bit of apprehension, but mostly joy.

The way baby girl says “Hi Mommy” in her tiny little toddler voice.  She only says a few words clearly at this age, but those are my favorites.

The exaggerated “mwah!” when baby girl gives a kiss.

Bedtime conversations with the boy when the lights go out after storytime.  Sometimes I get frustrated because I just want him to GO TO SLEEP ALREADY! when I’m tired myself, and I have a list of things I need to do before I can go to bed.  But when I take the time to relax and just enjoy laying there beside him, we have some of the best conversations.  Before I know it, he’ll no longer be a little boy and I’m really going to miss the quiet conversations in the dark.

Baby girl’s glorious giggles when we find her tickle spots. 

The way the boy can make baby girl laugh and the delight he takes in doing so.

How it feels when the boy comes running over to give me a hug that nearly knocks me off my feet.

How good it feels to pick up baby girl and snuggle her against me.  She’s starting to become more independent and less willing to sit and cuddle, but there are still moments when she’s content to sit still and those are the greatest.

The way the boy always wants to play with his sister, and the way she wants to do everything he does.  I suppose as they get older they’ll go through stages when they don’t want to have anything to do with one another, but I hope the foundation will be there so that they will come back around and always value each other.  When my only sister and I were kids, we used to have terrible fights.  My mom would always tell us that we should love each other because when they (my parents) were dead and gone, my sister and I would still have each other.  And now, though I hope my parents will be around for many more years, I am grateful for my sister and understand what my mom was trying to convey.

OK, one more fun one before I get too emotional, as I am prone to do: the way baby girl says “splee-splah” (splish-splash) when she wants to take a bath, and the delight the boy has showing off his pedaling prowess on his bike.  Those training wheels will be coming off before we know it!

I don’t have much gardening experience beyond sticking a few annuals in the ground each year, but I decided to try vegetable gardening this year, on a very small scale.  On the advice of a friend who knows a lot more about this than I do, I got two Earth Boxes and planted them this weekend.  I’ve been assured that they are almost foolproof.  Assuming you can follow directions to set them up properly and that they get enough sun, the rest is pretty easy.  A below soil irrigation system means that as long as you keep the reservoir full, you can neither over- nor under-water the plants.

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Behold, tomatoes on the left and cucumbers on the right.  (Ignore the weedy mess that is our “lawn”–we inherited that when we moved in last summer.)  They aren’t much to look at yet, but I have high hopes for my fledgling vegetable garden.

About two hours after I planted the Earth Boxes, the boy came into the kitchen and noticed the tomatoes I had purchased earlier that day at the farmers’ market.  He was disappointed when I told him that no, they had not come off the new tomato plants