Starry Nights

Today I'm thankful for...

1. The YMCA and Melissa who teaches the best kickboxing class ever! It's been close to 3 months since I've been and it felt soo goood to go back! Even though I was getting my butt kicked during the class I couldn't help but smile the whole time because I was just so happy to be working out again. Now I'm sore all over!

2. "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star." When Lilly asked me to sing it at bedtime she said, "I like that song at night because I LOVE watching the stars at night!" She has two framed Van Gogh paintings over her bed- "Starry Night over the Rhone" and her own water color rendition of "The Starry Night" that she painted at school.

3. My children's birth order. Tonight I decided that it's a good thing Lillian is the oldest, Sydney the middle and Liam the youngest. Lilly is the most emotional of the three and she demands a lot of individual attention. Sydney is very independent and Liam is so patient and chill. It would be very hard to get anything done if Lillian was the baby right now who needed all the attention all the time (like she did when she was born). I'm pretty lucky to have two younger kids who are pretty happy-go-lucky and content on their own- they let me tend to Lilly's needs fairly well. (Can you tell that we had kind of a rough night tonight? Poor Lillian is still adjusting to things, or maybe this is a long phase we're going through? I don't know, but we'll survive it somehow).

Here's my gratitude list from yesterday 1/24/12:

1. Reading "Goodnight Moon" with Sydney on the couch before nap time. She practically knows the whole story by heart and she could finish each sentence before I got to it. She kept asking where the "old lady whispering hush" went to at the end of the book, so I told her she went to her own bedroom to go night-night. Then we had to look at all the pages to see where the old lady was.

2. Lillian's plea to go to "Martha's Park" with the swings. It was 15 minutes before sunset, but we threw on our coats, got Liam in the carseat and we drove to the park for a last minute visit. G-pa arrived on his bike as we were leaving the house so he came with us, too. The girls had fun on the swings, going down the twisty slide, watching the pretty orange sunset, and taking turns going potty in the van on the little portable potty we keep stowed away for occasions such as that. :) After dark G-ma met up with us and G-pa pulled out his huge binoculars to do some Venus and Moon viewing. But the clouds refused to get out of the way, so Lilly and G-pa spied on residents in the high-rise apartment building about half a mile away instead. (just kidding) :) Before our fingers and noses got too cold we hurried home and had hot chocolate and popcorn at the girls' request. We'll have to try our night-sky viewing again, but it was a fun night.

3. The best news of the day- Bobby passed Step 3 Boards! YAY!! So glad to have that behind us!