A New Adventure at a New Place

Everyone said the first year of staying at home with two toddlers as close in age as mine are would be the most challenging, most difficult, and plain hardest.  Moms would encourage me that the second year would be a lot easier and continue to get easier with each year.  I sure hope they are right!  But what is easier?  Easier is a relative term in my mind.  What's easy for me may not be for the next mom and vice versa.  For me, I don't know that I would say things are easier now or harder now.  I just find that life with D&Z evolves and changes daily.  There's never a dull moment.  And just when I think I have conquered this whole motherhood thing and nothing can defeat me now, I find myself knocked flat on my back...yet, again!  I can say that it is a bit easier to venture out now and I have a lot more confidence and courage at taking the kids out now than I did a year ago. So for today I'll focus today on the fact that things right now are starting to get a bit "easier" in venturing out with D&Z. 

We really live in a great city and we often take all that is available to us for granted.  Our city is in the top 20 most popoluated cities in the US and also one of the most desired cities to live in.  In my humble opinion, it has the best of both worlds - lots of culture and diversity, but still a ton of southern charm with friendly people.  As much as we love living here, we tend to forget about some of the better options of things to do around here, especially with kids.  Well today was a day to explore a musesum in uptown with my kiddos thanks to the urging of my friend, Lanie.  We all headed uptown this morning to go check out Discovery Place for the first time with our kids.  Discovery Place is a science museum located near the heart of downtown/uptown (what you call it depends on if you're a native to this city or not). 

To our surprise, Discovery Place was easily accessible.  Parking was easy and getting into the building from the parking structure was easy as well.  Again, easy is a relative term because I'm saying easy as a mom carting around two kids in a large MacClaren twin techno stroller.  So I'm thinking if I can get through the doorways, elevators, etc, and not have a bunch of hoopla from the kids, then it's very easy!

We spent most of our time on the main floor exploring how things work with simple physic experiments.  I thought to myself David would be so proud of me for bringing our kids here, and I also thought of how he'd be in heaven with all these wonderful physics experiments to play with along with the kids.  So we'll definitely have to do a family trip and I'm sure David will do a much better job of explaining the how and why of everything to D&Z .  The big hits for the kids were the air experiments with balls, fans and sail boats.  Another huge hit was the Kapla blocks.  There was a pirate exhibit that we somehow missed and said we'll have to try for that one next time.  The museum also had a large kids play place for kids under 6.  We allowed the kids to play in that area for quite a bit until I was exhausted trying to make sure I had one eye on each of my kids who kept wanting to run in opposite directions, of course. 

Lanie and I agreed that this will have to be a more regular place that we'll visit.  I'm so glad she came up with the idea and we had the courage to go explore it together! 

A Most Wonderful Christmas

Words cannot begin to describe our Christmas this year.  While it wasn't the year I got my Barbie Dream House, my first telephone for my bedroom, or my brand new Mustang, I think this year rates at the top of my most favorite Christmas list!  It wasn't because of the gifts under the tree, the wonderful meal, or the glistening tree and beautiful decor...no, it had nothing to do with any of that.  It was simply because of seeing it through the eyes of my kids and sharing in that with my wonderful husband.  This was the first year that Dylan really "got it."  And when I say Dylan "got it" I don't mean the materialized version of it all.  Yes, while he was all excited and anxiously awaiting Santa's arrival and asking for a roller coaster this year, he learned the true meaning of Christmas and of Jesus's birth.  Dylan was able to tell us who he wanted to give gifts to this year to show his love for them just as the gift God gave us at Christmas in the Baby Jesus.  It's really amazing to see how much a 3 year old can absorb and I've learned not to take for granted that "he doesn't get it" because he often surprises us.  Zoe, as she is accustomed to doing, follows right behind in her big brother's footsteps.  So Dylan leads the way and makes the path and Zoe follows along happily adding her additional excitement and love of life.  Watching the two of them on Christmas Eve and Christmas morning made this the best Christmas ever!

This year we spent Christmas at home.  On Christmas Eve, we spent much of the morning baking Christmas cookies.  Dylan, David and I mixed up sugar cookie batter.  Dylan cut out most of the shapes (which is why we ended up with a multitude of candy cane shaped cookies).  After Dylan tired of decorating the cookies with icing, David and I took over and had some fun decorating cookies.  Zoe was in and out of our action at her whim.  Sometimes she was very involved and other times she was off playing with toys.  Late afternoon we had my family over and we had a light dinner of appetizers and such and just enjoyed spending time around the tree together.  Among the desserts, we had a cake and Dylan sang Happy Birthday to Jesus for all of us before we cut it.  He was so excited about Jesus' birthday cake and sharing in a piece of it.  It was so amazing to see the light of Christmas shine through his little eyes.  It made my heart full of all that is merry and bright.  As the night grew on, the kids were all wide eyed and excited with tales of Santa and I was wondering if anyone was going to get any sleep.  We all spread the reindeer food out on the lawn, hung up the stockings, and left the milk and cookies out for Santa.  Then it was time for everyone to part and get to bed.

Christmas morning was pure magic.  Dylan and Zoe came down the stairs with squeals of anticipation and they danced with joy when they saw that Santa had left toys just for them under the Christmas tree.  These kids are so blessed and loved as they spent hours opening presents from Santa and all of their family.  They were so appreciative and excited of each and every one.  Dylan was particularly cautious to understand who each present was from and would ask permission before opening it.  He would open it, show his excitement and say "thank you" even though the giver of the present wasn't always there in person.  I was so proud of my son's manners.  I hope he will always be so polite and gracious.  Zoe doesn't quite have the words yet, but her wide bright blues eyes told us everything.  She opened each present very daintily and carefully.  It took a while but she delighted in every tear of the wrapping paper and squealed so loud each time the gift was revealed.  Their joy will warm my heart forever.  I never want to forget those moments from Christmas morning. 

After naps and down time, we all went over to Bop and Nana's to have Christmas dinner and exchange presents.  The excitement was strong and squeals of joy continued to come one after another. The cousins all did a wonderful job of sharing their toys!  Dylan's biggest hit that wasn't his own toy was Alec's Wall-E robot.  Alec has such a geneorous heart and let Dylan play with it for what seemed like forever.  Dylan went to bed Christmas night talking about Wall-E and Alec.  It was really sweet.

This was truly a Christmas filled with much peace, an abundance of joy and love beyond our wildest dreams!

Let the Blogging Begin

Why is it that as each year comes to an end and a new one is about to begin we reflect of all that we have accomplished and all the things that we want to accomplish, do more, do better, or just do in the coming year? I think deep inside of all of us we like to self reflect and do some soul searching and this time of year opens the flood gates for that. So with my own self reflection of 2009 and looking into the mirror of what stands before me in 2010, I have decided to start a blog!

While those who know me well would say I am a lot of things, but I doubt a "writer" would be any of those things. I am not blogging to just merely write but to chronicle and archive the lives of my most precious little toddlers in their daily adventures. As a workaholic, career driven, overachiever woman in a a past life, in the past 18 months, I have become fully and totally devoted to the works of being a full time mom. While this is the hardest "job" I've ever done and the longest hours ever, it is by far the most rewarding. These are times that I need to appreciate and treasure with my little ones while I have them. So in efforts that we'll all have an archive to walk back through whenever needed, I'm blogging about our daily adventures now.

So feel free to join me on the ride and see what life is like in the "Adventures in the Lives of D&Z." It will be a very honest and hopefully at times entertaining account of our lives.