you are just my cup of tea: February 2012

February 23, 2012

30 lessons for living

I was reading the Washington Post today and came across a review of this book 30 Lessons in Living by Karl Pillemer. In his book he interviews older people to find out the most important lessons they have learned in their life. I wish I could have had this advice when I was young. What a huge help that would have been! It is no fun making stupid mistakes when you are young and having to suffer the painful consequences of your actions. Below, some of my favorite lessons from this book.

February 15, 2012

crawling and standing up

Emeri is just about ready to walk, which reminded me I never wrote down when she first started crawling and standing up. The weird thing is she learned both of those skills almost simultaneously. Can't wait to see her take her first steps any day now!

She started to crawl on Nov. 4th when she was 5 1/2 months old.

Just 2 days later on Nov. 7 she pulled herself up to a stand. Funny that she is sucking her thumb in this picture as I have never seen her do that. It must have something tasty on it :)

and, this is how funny Emeri thinks her brother is. Noah speeds around the house

keeping her laughing with all his antics!

Just like this :)

February 5, 2012

being a grandma

I love the blog Girls Gone Child. Besides the fact that she is funny and honest about being a Mom, she also has her own mother do posts once a week. Her Mom posts recipes and talks about healthy food {which I love}. She also writes about what it is like to be a grandma. I so feel like she is in my head. We both live close to our grand-kids but not so close that we can just run over to their house whenever we feel like it. Here is one of the posts I loved that she wrote about her grand-kids.

"The day Archer was born, Larry and I, Rachel and David, drove up from San Diego, arriving minutes after his birth. We held and stared at him all day, but when I left that night I cried wishing I could hold him longer, be there, breathe him in. I remember feeling betrayed that no one had ever told me that the hardest thing about being a grandparent is the heartbreak of leaving behind babies you love more than life itself. I had only heard the very popular adage that “the best part about being a grandparent is you get to spoil them and love them and then return them to their parents.” What a bunch of baloney, I thought, aching from the pain of separation. With your own children, you don’t experience this ache until they leave your home or go away to college. But with your grandchildren, it’s continuous."

Yes so true! I too, have to hold back tears every time I leave my sweet grandchildren.

February 2, 2012

new years fun

Wow it has been a while since I have been on here. Since getting on Pinterest about a year ago, it is a lot harder to blog. I do want to keep up on the family happenings and a few other things I wouldn't want to pin. That brings me to New Years. I love holidays and always have lots of fun celebrating them with Noah and Emeri. When I was little on New Years Eve my parents would let us stay up late and when the clock turned midnight they let us bang pans together. It seems so funny now but it is one of my vivid memories from childhood. So I didn't want to let New Years go by without having a little party with my grand-kids.

I got them both a New Years hat to wear and luckily Emeri couldn't feel her's and never touched it. She was quite fascinated with Noah's though.

They loved the blowers. I will be heading back to Party City to get a bunch more of these. It turned out to be the best trick to get Emeri to smile. Every time I blew it at her she broke out in a huge smile. This will come in handy to take pictures. A lot of times she gets serious when we are taking pictures of her and Britt and I can't get her to smile. No more of that now that I can use these.