little pieces

i'm home. by myself. in the afternoon. music is loud. there has been some dancing involved. i love it. but before i get back to the party, an update. in list form.

1. steve got a job - full time, day hours. praise the Lord, hallelujah!!!!!! he's actually doing what i do where i do it. and it is so perfect for us right now. our job allows us flexible hours and time working from home. it works so well for our family right now.

2. which means the boys are in daycare. and they are happy. C already got his first (double) ear infection, but i get it. that happens in those kinds of settings. 

3. my sister moved to france. which is a huge bummer since she's my best friend and all. you can follow their journey HERE.

4. our library fine was $37. not $25. damn.

5. we have two new...what's the word? roommate isn't right, guest doesn't really fit. but we have two friends staying with us for as long as they'd like. our house is FULL. one bathroom. five boys. poor me. but we are happy. so so so so so happy to have them. it's my dream to have a house full of people to share our lives and our dinner with. 

6. super bowl is in town and the city is going crazy. you can feel the excitement everywhere. and even though i probably won't make it to any of the festivities, it's a fun time to be here.

back to these precious moments of peeing with the door open before the boys get home.

the first cut is the deepest

in eighth grade i got this really terrible haircut. i brought in a picture of a model, cut out from a delia's magazine. her hair was short, she was so cute. she was a freakin' model and for some reason i thought i'd walk out of the salon looking just like her. (i was 14 and stupid.) instead, i walked out looking like a boy with a reverse mullet. longer in front than in back. but overall, really really short. and i hated it. i cried. and to make matters worse, i had to walk home. walked home crying hoping no one would see me or mistake me for a boy. to make things triply worse...we had family pictures a few weeks later. and that picture was hung above the piano in our living room for at least the next 10 years. it would probably still be there had my parents not divorced and my mom had not taken down any picture with my dad in it. thank goodness for divorce.

funny story. a couple of years ago my mom found this picture again and asked my sisters and me if any of us wanted it. my answer: HELL NO.

i hadn't cut my hair super short since then. my hair has always been pretty short. at least for as long as i've made my own decisions about my hair (even if they were bad ones.) i've tried growing out my hair a couple of times, but i inevitably end up getting sick of it and chopping it. and when i do, i feel more like myself. short hair feels like me. it just fits.

(holy long post about hair.)

i've been wanting a pixie-ish cut for years (longer than i debated about any of my tattoos). but of course i was nervous, afraid my face wasn't pretty or thin enough for a mega short cut. afraid of repeating the incident from 1999. but after some encouragement/pressure from my bff H and S telling me to get out of the house and not come back until i chopped my hair because he was sick of hearing me talk about it, i did it. i called a place i'd been once before and they had an opening in ten minutes with a girl named jessy. i looked her up on the website. she had a pixie cut herself, tattoos, and not one, but three nose rings. THREE nose rings. i knew she was my girl. so i went and she cut.

i'm not unhappy. i'd give it a 5. with a little headband or barrette, maybe a 6. but i'm glad to have finally done it. to be young and brave and careless. and to have time for it to grow out before any family pictures.

run

a couple of months ago, steve and i signed up for the mini-marathon which takes place in indy every spring. we ran this race in 2010, right before i got pregnant with C (i mean, right before getting pregnant with C. he was born almost exactly 9 months later. side note: nothing like setting yourself up to fail by being in the best shape of your life before getting pregnant. bad idea). it's a really cool race, largest half marathon in the nation, and at least a mile of the course is run on the Indy 500 track. pretty neat.

steve and i felt like signing up would be that extra motivation we've been needing to lose some weight and add a little more discipline to our lives.

we haven't really run since registering for the race. and truthfully, i can count on one hand the times i've run since C has been born. pathetic. but today i ran. two miles. slow pace, but i did it.

running the mini isn't a new years resolution. it's not a goal of mine for 2012. i've run two half marathons in the past two and a half years and that feels like enough for me. i'm not dying to run another one. i've loved the time off from running and i don't think i'd regret choosing chocolate chip pancakes on saturday mornings with the boys over running for two hours.

but i love to run. and i'm craving some self-discipline in my life right now. so today i ran. and it felt good. 

 (my sister and i after the oak brook half. september 2009)

 (s and i after the mini. may 2010. 

we probably conceived like right after this picture was taken. high on endorphins, looking so thin and sexy, i mean it's possible. just kidding. sorry, mom.)

it was a very good year

this crazy baby turns one in a couple of weeks.

i haven't started planning his party. because i don't think we're going to have one. 

that's just the kind of mom i am.

a holly jolly christmas

just for fun, our christmas card...

 

colder weather

i'm behind. on posting. on laundry. on losing that baby weight. (c turns a year next month.) so i'll start at the beginning. with Christmas! Christmas is always a hectic five days or so for us. each year we say we're going to do it differently. travel less, slow down a bit. we had five Christmases is four days. which is a lot. a lot of packing, unpacking, driving, quick goodbyes. but i can't imagine skipping out on any part of the festivities.

this was our third Christmas as a little family. and kept with tradition (the only tradition we really have) of ordering pizza as we celebrate together. we woke the kids up from their naps and let them open up presents.

 (j with his gumball machine. this has turned out to be useful in bribes/rewards.)

the next morning, we headed out to Chicago for some celebrations with my side of the family. everyone was there. sisters, brother-in-laws, all the kids. it was great. that hasn't happened in a long time and won't happen again for a long time either. we kicked things off in chicago with my dad.

 (c with my grandma.)

 (c and auntie cj)

 (the big kids.)

(me and my dad)

we spent christmas eve at my mom's - which is craziness. all of us in one house with five kids going crazy about presents (technically only three were going crazy about presents.) but i LOVE it. makes me so happy!

 (snuggles with grandma.)

(ron and b)

 (this is just kind of adorable.)

 (the best i could get of all five.)

 (my sisters, mom, and me)

 (so happy!)

 (uncle steve and b)

(sisters - texas and france are way too far)

pretty much right after presents and dinner, we headed out to muncie for some more family fun! 

 (christmas jammies!)

 (aunt jess and the boys. check out croz's scowl.)

(all j wanted was a red guitar. he's a natural.)

 (grammy, pawpaw, and their boys.)

(cousins!)

we had a great, hectic christmas filled with all our favorite people and places. and even though it's tiring, we wouldn't change it for the world!