Rain dance and a host of other unrelated things

We happened upon Katrina and Duncan on campus this week, and this pic cracked me up. Duncan is attempting to body-slam Pudgy…not gonna happen. If you zoom in, you can kinda get a glimpse of Luke’s panicked expression, as he stares at Katrina for help.

Have I mentioned how much Luke LOVES to sit in the trunk? (No, I have never, ever closed it.) Anyway, anytime I’m getting the stroller out, he lunges for it.

Onto the title of the post- Rebekah chose to dance out in the rain when we got back early from our walk (due to the rain). She decided a construction worker’s hat would do the job of water resistance nicely.

A little catch-up- a few weeks ago, we were invited to a BBQ at our old building. It was a ton of fun…Josh is helping barbecue below.

Rebekah enjoyed her sausage.

Luke enjoyed crawling on the pavement- he LOVES to crawl in lines- meaning, if there is a concrete square enclosing a grassy area, he will choose the crawl the cement rather than the soft grass. (Similarly, under supervision, he adores crawling the precarious ledge in his loft-room, too)

Wow. No one asked me about this one. Evidently, our neighbor girl got a hold of Rebekah and this was the result! This was not a fake smile- she was that jazzed about pink make-up and men’s aftershave. Mom, good thinking on your Christmas present idea!

Rebekah loves to stop and smell the roses…literally….as in every time we pass them. She comes by this naturally, as there is little I love more than the smell of roses.

As for development- Luke cruises here and there, but shows no zeal for walking. He seems to like to climb, a bit scary, but is learning to go down the stairs backwards, praise the Lord. He is a very picky eater, but devours carbs, which we are limiting big time due to his “husky” body type. He is adorably plump in all the right ways, but he does not eat in a healthy way, so we are working on this. He went to bed without dinner tonight (and several nights this week ) due to choosing nothing over the variety of offered foods. He would love to eat cookies, Pringles, toast, cereal, and marshmallows all day. He has a lot of words and sounds and understands a lot! he can say Mama, Dad, Ba-kah, ba (ball), eeeees (keys), nuh-nuh (night night and milk oddly enough), buh-buh (bye bye), bow-bow (bounce, meaning he wants to jump on the couch), etc. He also has strings of sounds I am unable to decipher. As for Rebekah, she is practically writing how-to manuals. Seriously, she wants to know how EVERYTHING works and misses nothing! (much like her engineering father). I won’t bore you with details/examples, especially since I wrote a lot this post.

In other news, I have waffled on preschool for Rebekah about 100 times just this week. She has been a WRECK! I attribute this to several things: 1) bad choices- we all make them, a 3 year old is certainly not exempt, 2) overly tired (has not napped most days), and 3) I have been too task-driven and have not prioritized time with her (or Luke) enough. So, today, after her 3rd or so meltdown, I realized my role (see #3), and committed to spending more quality time with her. This is a tough one for me. It’s not that I don’t adore hanging out with her, I am just not a quality time girl myself. I believe my daughter is like my husband and needs focused “me-time”, meaning not hanging out while I multi-task. It is only fair. So, after a nap and some Mama time, Rebekah was much more herself this afternoon. We also have plans for a swim date tomorrow.

All this to say that her overly-tired disposition and Luke’s reluctance to drop his am nap make me less inclined to put R in school on 9/10. Plus, it will only be 2 months before we leave for the US for 2 months. I am tempted to defer until Jan (if they’ll let us) or just pull out for this year. We’ll see.

On a happy note, Josh is wrapping up his Master’s “dissertation” (they flip-flop the terms here, so his PhD will be a thesis) and I think he feels good about it. He has worked hard and almost nonstop on something, be it 2 sets of exams, a series of lengthy papers, book reviews, or this dissertation, since January, so I will be glad to see him finish it up. Granted he then has contracted to write a book review to be published and will then start what we ultimately came here to do: a PhD. But, I know we’re ready, so I am confident he will persevere and continue strong.

Lastly, I have been blessed with a writing job. My mom happened to mention how I wasn’t currently writing curriculum to one of Josh’s best friends (who used my mom as a realtor, smart guy!), and he happened to have some copywriting I could do. So, I took a whirlwind look at his sound-masking company and did a few articles for them on the need and advantage of corporate sound-masking. As it turns out, I might be able to help with some other areas, kind of like a consultant, so we’ll see how it pans out. Regardless, every dollar helps, and our monthly expenses have really gone up with our new flat and recent storage fees. So, losing my writing job was a tough one. Thus, we are thankful for this opportunity, and for the chance to expand my writing skills.

Related posts:

1. Rain Dance and Christmas #2
2. Things I love about my daughter
3. 35 Things I Love About Josh
4. Lots of New Things!!!
5. Things I Love Thurday: The making of an outfit