Friday, October 21, 2005

Eating chocolate covered strawberries
The carousel at the Zoo-Note Jack's model pose
Jack and Ty looking nothing alike and yes, Jack does have matching PJ's.

This week had some significant milestones. Today Ty laughed out loud for the first time and Jack spoke his first grammatical sentence. Jack had a red mark on his head and I asked him what happened and he said, “Ty did it.” For some reason I have a feeling I will hear this sentence quite a lot in the next 16 years or so. Still it was really exciting to hear him say this, plus he appears to be picking up words at a much faster rate than before. I hope this isn’t a phase but he is not whining as much either. Maybe communicating is helping that.

This is the first week we made cookies together. We have made brownies before but not cookies. He liked the chocolate chips but refused to eat the batter. More for me. It’s just a matter of time before he figures out the batter is the best part. We also ate chocolate covered strawberries. After not letting Jack have any sugar for two years, it feels like I’ve gotten sugar happy but to Jack, plain yogurt, bananas and kiwi fruit are just as much of a treat. He is such a good eater.

Thursday night I played volleyball with three friends that I’ve played with on and off for about 9 years. I hadn’t seen Radney in about five years. We had such a good time catching up that I stayed out for an hour and a half, even though I was pretty tired and it was almost 10 PM by the time I got home. Playing sand volleyball does terrible things to my pedicure but as much as I like a nice pedicure, I would rather be playing sand volleyball. Perhaps it’s time for closed toe shoes. Anyway, it’s always fun to get together with people that you know from years past—they always bring up embarrassing stories like the way I got drunk at a Halloween party while dressed as Rubbermaid (French maid costume with condoms hanging on me). A few of my blog readers were there to witness my most public debacle as it seems every single person in Phoenix was there (1998).

I exchanged a couple emails with Camille who I met at work here and she moved back to Washington to be closer to her family. She has two kids also, and recently went back to work. I have to say that I really, really like going to work. Intel isn’t the right place for a lot of people but it so well suited for me. I don’t really like confronting people outside of work (I can’t even bring myself to tell the woman at the nail salon to stop cutting my cuticles off) but for some reason it comes easy to me at work because it’s expected and rewarded. The thing is that I feel guilty for wanting to work. We could live on Brian’s salary with a few cutbacks but I want to go to work and I think I will always work to some extent. But I feel like I should be saying something like, “I love my kids so much that I need to stay home with them and not have anyone else raise them.” Why doesn’t that feeling supersede my desire to work? For me, working turns the time that I spend with my kids into a drug… I get so much pleasure from the time spent with them that I feel intoxicated. Well, it’s something that I struggle with every single day. I guess there is a sweet spot for me as to how much I work versus how much time I spend with the kids. I just need to find it.

Up next: our saga with the artificial turf people and saying good-bye to the carpet that the cats have been peeing on for the past 6 years.