J at 6 months

We had a little scramble to get all our paperwork together for him, but we were thrilled to be able to adopt J in February. We named him J, for my father who passed away last November. Our boy has been growing like crazy, in his body and in our hearts, and we are so blessed to have him and Z. We call him “little monster” and “bubba” because that was Z's best attempt at pronouncing “brother” when we brought him home.

He is growing well, but differently from Z. He's about average for height, but he's thinner than she was. It seemed like it took him until he was three months to have anything you could call a bootie, and he never really got the fat rolls. He struggled a lot with his digestion the first few months. We finally figured out that he was allergic to milk around 3.5 months, and that made a huge difference. He stopped spitting up literally overnight when we changed his formula and he's been a happy baby ever since. He is up to date on all his shots and the doctor says he's hitting all his milestones. He started on solids this last month and really loves to eat! He wanted nothing to do with cereal, really, but loves any kind of soft veggie or fruit that we give him, and he's done great on the little bit of beef and chicken he's tried so far. I think his favorite is apple, but it's hard to know for sure because he's so enthusiastic about everything!

He cut his first teeth, found his feet, and got up on all fours all in a week last month. It's like he was racing to see how many milestones he could hit and how fast. Not long after that, he was crawling. It wasn't a big dramatic moment, he just looked across the room at a toy he wanted and started motoring over to it. He was so pleased when he got there, though, that he kinda forgot how he had done it. It was several days before he did it again, and a few days after that before he finally mastered it and added it to his daily repertoire of tricks.

Some of his favorite things to do now are to grab onto faces and chew chins and noses. He knows the word “zrbtt” (I think most people call them “blowing raspberries”) and if Z starts giving zrbtts to me or Rose, he will crawl across the floor to do it, too. He especially likes to zrbtt people on the cheeks. He's very slobbery, so you have to love him a lot to let him do it. He has a great grip, though, and can all but do chinups off my ears. I had been growing my hair out, and trying out dreadlocks, but he was getting his sticky little fingers so tangled in the locs, and then he barfed in them and I couldn't get the smell out, so I had to cut it short. He still gets a good grip on it and pulls me in close so he can chew my nose, but at least now it's easy to untangle him. He's got swimming lessons coming up in the fall, so we can't wait to see if he learns as quickly as Z did. He loves to play and splash in the water, and we've taught him how to float on his back and hold his breath and go underwater already.

J has been to East Texas for a family reunion, and to Houston to visit with the cousins, and to Austin to visit with our friends and family there, and also to College Station to visit with our good friends who live there. His cousins just love helping with getting him changed and dressed and fed, and they are very excited when they know Z and J are coming for a visit. He hasn't gotten to go on any real vacations yet, but we do have one coming up in October, we'll be going to the beach. I think he'll love crawling around in the sand. He's a good traveler and likes to babble in his car seat and he sleeps well in the car.

He's the apple of his Zeidy's eye (Zeidy is Yiddish for grandfather, that's what Rose's dad is called) and loves to tug on Zeidy's mustache and sit with him in the recliner when we go visit. Rose's mom goes by Bubbie (Yiddish for grandmother) and she loves to hold him and feed him his bottles. We try to make sure we see them once a week, at least, so J is very familiar with them and always gets excited when he sees either of them open the door.

My mom recently moved to a new house, so we've been to visit with her a couple of times in her new place outside of Austin. J did his first rolling over there, on the rug, at Easter. My mom is very fond of him and often calls him by my dad's nickname. She reminds him sometimes that he'll have to be a little bit tough to hold his own with such a feisty big sister, but tells him it's okay to be sweet, too.

He's surrounded by music all the time, because we sing to him and to Z as we play our way through the day. He likes to have lullabyes at night, and his favorite toys are a little play piano and a musical table that is covered in noisemaking gizmos. He is definitely a pacifier-loving baby, and never was very interested in his thumb or any other soother. The day he figured out how to put his own pacifier in his mouth was probably one of his happiest, and that's saying a lot because he is a very happy baby. He has an easy, bubbly laugh that he uses all the time. Everything from funny sounds to bouncing on a lap will make him laugh out loud. He enjoyed a bouncer, liked his swing, and LOVES his jumpy seat. He can sit and bop up and down in his jumpy seat for what seems like an hour at a time. He's a funny sleeper, he wakes often as he tosses and turns but it's easy to get him back to sleep. He takes several good naps during the day, but doesn't yet sleep through the night.

And even though he's very nearly 8 months old now, I am so proud of myself for getting this and Z's updates written, that I don't even care that it's late. Writing anything at all is a victory right now.

Z at 18 months

I know that Z is actually 21 months at this writing. I'm behind. What else is new? This is more or less the story of my life, so I'm patting myself on the back for getting it written at all.

Our Z is now 18 months! How the time has flown by! We were blessed to adopt Z's brother in February. We named him J, for my late father. She had a little trouble adjusting to another baby in the house at first, but she loves him now and is very tender toward him. She especially likes to help him find his pacifier and get it in his mouth!

She has grown in all of her teeth except for the molars and she is eating anything that comes her way, although she is now somewhat skeptical of any “new” food – meaning food she hasn't seen lately. Her bar-none favorite is cookies, but she only gets those in moderation. Her favorite everyday food is no longer the banana – it's probably a tie between apples and pears. She loves to eat chicken and “noon -ells” (noodles) and nuts and if it were an option would probably have macaroni and cheese with every meal – even breakfast! She and I usually share a bowl of oatmeal or cereal or yogurt and berries in the morning, and then she eats whatever we're having for lunch and dinner.

She learned to walk in May, on Mother's Day, in fact. We were over at Rose's parents' house for dinner when Z finally let go of the couch and walked clear across the floor from Rose to Rose's sister, Simona (Aunt Mimo – Z pronounces it Moomoo). We had noticed that she was much more brave about trying out standing and taking steps when she was on a carpeted or soft surface, so a month or two ago we decided to put a colorful foam mat down on our wood floors in the living room. That's the room where she spends the most time, and it really encouraged her to practice her free standing, bouncing, and cruising. So we're excited that she's walking now, and she definitely appreciates the soft landing she gets when she trips. She's also an excellent swimmer. We took swim lessons in the spring and she can now swim up to 10 feet or so from person to person, or to the wall and back. She loves to be in the water and to swim and play.

She does a wonderful job of talking and signing with us and it seems like she picks up a new word every day! She can do signs for all of her favorite foods – apples, pears, oranges, berries, carrots, milk, bread, and juice, and can say something that you can recognize for pretty much all of those things, too. She loves the song “Itsy Bitsy Spider” and there's a hip-hop version from an artist named Basho that she especially likes. She loves to watch movies of herself and her new brother on my cell phone, and she calls them “mini-moos”. She also really loves the song “Little Old Lady From Pasadena” - which she calls “Go! Go!” for the part where they sing “Go, Granny, Go, Granny, Go, Granny, Go!” and “Lime In The Coconut” which she calls “Nutnut”. She loves to dance and “The Hokey Pokey” is a big-time favorite. Before she could stand, we would do that song with her sitting on my lap and I would pick her up and spin her around during the “turn yourself around” segment. Now she stands up and spins on her own until she's so dizzy she's giggling and all but falling over. It's a huge joy to watch her growing and learning.

We went to a family reunion last month in East Texas. It was the first gathering on my Dad's side of the family since he passed away. It was bittersweet for that reason – so good to get to see all the aunts and uncles and cousins and all their growing families – so sad to miss Daddy during all of it. Z and J were the youngest ones there, and were quite the hit. Everyone from the aunties to the kids-of-the-cousins wanted to get to snuggle them and play with them. Z also got to go and spend a week staying with her cousins in Katy, TX while my sister, Bebe, and I were packing up our house to get us ready to move. We've been talking about moving to Austin for years, and we're finally getting ready to put the house on the market. We'll continue to be back in Dallas regularly, though, as Rose's family lives up here. We let Z go stay with the cousins while we were cleaning up and staging everything because her favorite trick right now is emptying containers. It's hard to pack when a toddler is going behind you and undoing all your work! She loved visiting with the cousins, swimming and eating popsicles and drawing with sidewalk chalk and dressing up like a princess.

She finally got her first cold in February. Aside from that, she's been a picture of health and is still pretty much average for height and weight. She usually stays between 40th and 60th percentile for both, although she was a little on the tall side at this last checkup. Learning to walk has slimmed her down a little bit. She was a very pudgy baby until then, and now she's burning off so much more energy walking everywhere. She does great with regular cups, and is starting to get the hang of forks and spoons, too. She loves to try, whether she succeeds or not, and most of the time leaves her plate or bowl sitting on the tray. Food does fly occasionally, but not too often. She takes one good nap every afternoon, though it takes some convincing now to get her to go down. We have most success either walking her in the stroller or going to run an errand in the car. Either way, being buckled into stillness helps her fall asleep. She still usually wakes once or twice a night, but is sleeping 10 or 12 hours a night in spite of that, so she gets great rest, for which we are so grateful.

Profound Motherhood Moments #2

I have these things I write on Facebook, my Profound Motherhood Moments. I just hit #50, so I'm rounding up the last 25 and sharing them here. If you're not a Mother, you may still find these apply to your relationship with your kids (as a dad) or your pets. Here is the first list

26. A baby who will fight a kleenex like it's a zombie velociraptor intent on eating her brains slowly and painfully will then turn around and blissfully wipe boogers on your shirt.
27. After spontaneous sloppy baby kisses are planted on your cheek, you would do well to check in a mirror, lest ye enter the doctor's office with a blob of boogers stuck to your face.
28. Babies totally don't "get" Daylight Savings Time. Spring forward and fall back are ignored by the diaper set.
29. To use my powers for good or evil? I forestalled the temper tantrum with a game of peekaboo 5 times (good) and then I let it happen and recorded it (evil). Watch this space for a video link
30. A stay-at-home-mom on vacation is just a stay-at-condo-mom, BUT your afternoon walk to the park is a walk on the beach, and your spouse makes lunch! It's a good life!
31. That cool jazz riff I'm singing as I putter around? Came from a Leap Frog music toy. My baby's stuff is officially hipper than I am.
32. (From Rose) We survived the first year and we're still sane. Except I just ate a half-chewed banana discarded by the baby. (imagine Animal from the Muppets here) AAAAAAAAAAGGGGHHHH
33. You may prefer to eat the nicer loose oranges over the bulk-in-a-bag ones, but you will also be cleaning up after someone who thinks nothing of dripping orange juice from both elbows and her chin simultaneously
34. Do not feed cabbage to a person who lacks molars
35. From now on, when I use the phrase, "it's better than a poke in the eye with a fork," I will be speaking from personal experience. Toddler with fork-1, Momma's cornea-0.
36. I will continue to maintain that glitter is the herpes of the craft world. As evidence, my son spent about 5 hours at the glitter-festooned residence of his girl cousins today, and when I changed his diaper, there was a fleck of glitter on his man business, glinting brilliantly at me. Once you have a glitter outbreak, you'll be fighting them the rest of your life.
37. What is it about newborns and 21-year olds that makes them think "party at my crib til dawn!" is a good idea?
38. You never know how fast you can get from the front to the back seat of your car until you spend a moment trying to figure out how many labrador retrievers are attempting to share a car seat with your newborn.
39. I frequently mock the guitar solos in classic rock, mimicking them in a nasal nee-nee-neer voice. Zoe is in the back seat, copying me, using her foot as an air mic. I am totally winning!
40. No matter how beloved my eldest child is, she may *NOT* bogart the bacon. There are some table manners she is expected to learn, even at this age.
41. Growing bicuspids is a pain in the face, but it opens up your world to some delicious foods. Today, pistachios!!!
42. that very first social smile absolutely melts your heart
43. On the plus side, my hair is long enough to trail in a pile of spit up on my shoulder. On the minus side, my hair trailed in a pile of spit up on my shoulder.
44. The optimal nursing position for a baby with a toddler sibling is anything that places baby's head closer to the arm of the couch than to the sibling's pointy flailing elbows and knees. If you have to switch ends of the couch when the baby switches sides, it's worth it.
45. Wine packed for road trip is wedged between stacks of diapers and padded with burp rags. Victory!
46. Decide ahead of time how big a puddle of spilled milk will make you cry and put less than that in the toddler's cup.
47. it's okay to get in the fridge and raid yesterday's sippy cup for milk to cream your coffee if the toddler has a cold and can't drink the milk anyway.
48. (courtesy of Rose) Motherhood is really meant to teach you the cornucopia of things you can do one-handed while tending a kid with the other.
49. Things that are just as endearing the second time around - discovery of the feet, learning how to work the pacifier/thumb (they go cross-eyed!), grabbing you by the hair and pulling you in for a big, sloppy, wet chomp on the nose.
50. If they're gonna call them milestones, they should be a minimum of a quarter mile apart. Guess who found his feet and cut a tooth all in the same week?

Parenting surprise

I'm a casual writer and avid cook, but something about those sleep-deprived early months with my first baby really broke the part of me that cooks and writes. I can ordinarily walk into the kitchen, glance into the pantry and fridge, and whip up a meal from what's there. For six months after my daughter came home, I would walk in and glance at the fridge and ... nothing. It felt to me like what stroke victims with aphasia describe when they try to think of a word for an object in front of them - they know they should know it, everything about it is familiar, but nothing comes to mind, no matter how they stare and concentrate and think! Writing was the same way... I couldn't string two sentences together, no matter how long I stared at the composer screen on my computer, or the blank page in front of me! Eventually, both skills came back, much to the relief of both myself and my wife! I kept up with reading; that was no problem, likely because it allowed me to be more receptive than creative. But I desperately missed adult social interaction, particularly with people who "got me". I'm not looking for anyone to fulfill me or be my reason for being, but all the same, I need a few kindred spirits in my life. I really benefited from online support groups and my friendships with far-flung folks that I maintain through Facebook, but longed for someone to chat with over coffee or a walk. I still went walking with the kid(s) all the same, but I would've liked a buddy to walk with sometimes. I did a poor job of self-care when my first baby was tiny, partly because she was surprisingly needy (may have been a perfectly typical newborn, but she was my first so I don't have a basis for comparison) and it was hard to meet her immediate needs and mine at the same time, and partly because I easily fall prey to inertia. If I'm sitting on the couch after getting the kids to bed, I'm likely to keep sitting on the couch until bedtime, instead of getting up and working on a project. If I get started with the dishes, I'm liable to spend the whole evening cleaning, because that's one chore that is NEVER done! I know this about myself, and have for a long time -- I'm really bad at scheduling my time, at planning finite chunks of time to work on things, and at managing multiple projects in parallel. It's one of the things I liked about my job: all my projects were two weeks or less (usually much less!) in duration and they came on one at a time with little overlap. Parenting is one SERIOUSLY long-term project, with a ton of overlapping aspects. That's not to say there aren't short-term parts, or that there aren't serial aspects of it, but I find those easy to deal with so I don't give them much thought. I've done a much better job taking care of myself and holding onto my sanity with my son. I'm building up a support network, and that helps a lot. I've also done a better job of self-care and making sure I get the rest and nourishment I need. I'm involved in things that give me a sense of purpose apart from my kids. I would say at this point my transition from working girl to working-at-home mom has been successful, but it was not without its bumps in the beginning.

Open Letters Edition

If I had written an open letter to my daughter three hours ago, it would've gone something like this:

Dear one,

Go to sleep. Now. Stop poking your finger into holes in your crib. Lie Down. Put your hat back on. Stop taking your hat off. Yes, you can sing to yourself. Put your hat back on. Go right ahead and babble. Lie Down. Lie Down. Lie Down. Put your hat back on. Lie Down. You know, you're not going to be harmed in any way if you fall asleep. Put your hat back on. Lie down. Stop poking your finger into holes in your crib. Just lie down. Put your hat back on first. Now lie down. And go to sleep. Yes, like that. The snoring is cute.

Love,
Mom

P.S. You're about 10 times more adorable right after you fall asleep than you are right before.

If I wrote an open letter to the clerk at the UPS store today, it would've gone something like this:

Ivan,

You are very sweet and I appreciate you taking the time to attempt to get the address from me three times because I'm tending two squirming babies who keep interrupting. I'm sorry that I'm not more organized. Letting me write it down was a good idea. Thanks for your patience, I hope you have kids some day and that someone is nice to you when you're trying to manage them and some difficult task at the same time.

Love,
That Frazzled Mom

If I wrote an open letter to the neighbor it would go something like this:

Dude,

Your tree is scratching up my car. Again. You need to trim it. I found a flower from that Crape Myrtle in my underwear today, and that's pretty much the last straw. (Can you call it a straw when it's clearly a flower? I'm going with yes.) I'm tired of getting my clothes and my hair and my babies and my car door snagged on your tree. I can't park any further away from the tree than I do, because I'd be too close to the corner and I'd rather deal with you than City Code Enforcement. I'm probably going to break that branch off again this year. Just like I did last year. And I'm not sorry.

No love and increasingly less good will as the flowers pile up in my footwell,
The Tall Neighbor-lady

Don't say it!

You know how if you say something like, "I can't live without cheese!" you're supposed to immediately knock on wood so you don't jinx yourself?  Yeah, I shoulda done that.

My totally amazing young son (who I breastfeed) is allergic to cow's milk.  Which is the primary ingredient in my favorite food: cheese.  Also, cheesecake, cheese dip, cheese fondue, baked brie, cheeseburgers, nachos, lasagna, eggplant (or anything else) parmesan, those little plates of cheese that come out with a wine flight, and every hors d'oeuvres on the planet (that's worth eating).  I can do without ice cream.  Seriously, I can! I've liked sherbet and sorbet better since I was 3 and got to pick my own flavor at the Baskin Robbins in the "old" mall in Kingsville.  I always drifted away down to the left end of the little display case, to where the Orange Sherbet, Rainbow Sherbet, and Daiquiri Ice were kept.  That was my favorite frozen stuff and it still is, Bluebell's Pecan Pralines 'n Cream notwithstanding.

So, when my wife was considering the Paleo and Primal diets, I urged her strongly to go with Primal. Why?  Because of the CHEESE, of course!  And every time we got into a conversation with someone about how and why she was eating a Primal diet, this would come up.  And I'd loudly -- and likely melodramatically -- exclaim that I would absolutely DIE without cheese.  As my friend pointed out tonight, when you say things like that, God quirks an eyebrow at you and says, "Really?"  And then He laughs.  Likely melodramatically.

Which brings us to how I totally screwed myself out of cheese for the near foreseeable future.  Because a baby who is allergic to cow's milk is allergic typically to the proteins in it, which pass through breastmilk from mama to baby.  So I'm off the cheese for a while, and all milk-derived products.  The great news is that I'm friends with some awesome dairy-free eaters, and they've already turned me on to some great resources and substitutes that will make this transition as easy as can be.  The hardest thing so far has been finding a non-dairy milk that will do as a coffee creamer.  I'm totally unenthused about non-dairy processed creamers, like Coffee Mate, so I've been exploring the almond milk (fail), coconut milk (fail), flax milk (reasonable), and hemp milk (reasonable) alternatives.  Oh, and I'm allergic to soy, so soy milk is Right Out.  The problem with most of these milks as creamers is that they don't have the right pH and fat content to actually cream the coffee.  The flax leaves an oil slick on the surface of the coffee but tastes good, the hemp milk is grainy and falls out of solution (albeit making beautiful spiral patterns) like miso soup does.  I'm still searching for the perfect alternative coffee creamer, so if you know of one, please feel free to advise me!

Holy crap, we have a baby!

How long have I been away from the blog that I didn't mention my new son somewhere in the four months he's been with us? At least four months, I guess. It used to be that I didn't have much to say unless it was about what went into or came out of a baby. These days, I just don't have the time! If I can't scratch it out with my phone in 140 characters or less, I just don't say it. I'm doing really well if I read something that I don't scan in a minute or less, again on my phone, so sitting down to write has been utterly out of the question. I'm already scrubbing sand out of my eyes tonight, but I have to sit a little longer while some stuff cools off in the kitchen, so here I am.
Z took to her new brother like any big sister would. She started trying to poke his eyes and look in his mouth and check out his hands and feet and figure out if he was a baby why he moved so much and made so much noise. Most of the babies she'd previously encountered were made of plastic. These days, she's doing much better. She loves to kiss him goodnight and snuggle him and if he cries she's the first one to go check on him. She still pinches him from time to time, but she's getting the hang of kindly sisterhood. For his part, he's gotten a few accidental hair pulls in there, so we're calling it nearly even. We're thrilled to have this little miracle in our family, and blessed to have had the opportunity to adopt him. We named him James after my father, which is bittersweet since my dad passed away this past Thanksgiving. This is his first grandson, and he would have loved to have met him. For his part, baby boy is a jolly soul who laughs at anyone who will stand still to make eye contact with him.

I hope to be able to manage more updates now that he's approaching the sleeps-through-the-night part of his life.  You'll see it here if that happens!

Credit where credit is due:  The photos in this post were taken by my stunningly talented sister, Joy.  Thanks, Joy!

Profound Motherhood Moments

I don't have much to say these days. I know this is not news, as it's pretty much what I've said at the beginning of every not-really-a-post post I've made since we brought Z home. That said, I do occasionally post an update to Facebook, and I have successfully managed to do a string of these on the topic of motherhood. Since all I've got of the publishable variety these days are profound thoughts in 140 characters or less, I strung a bunch of 'em together to make this list. Enjoy!

Profound Motherhood* Moments

* I call them Motherhood moments because I am a mother. If you are a Father, you probably have experienced some of these, too. Though a few of them are quite specific to Motherhood, feel free to think of them as Parenthood moments if that makes it more fun for you...

1. (On Dec 29, just 14 days into motherhood...) I just spent 20 minutes (over coffee) trying to remember if I've showered since Christmas. (I have.)
2. I had someone else's barf on me three times between 6 and 10 this morning, and I was more worried about her than me or my pajamas
3. babies will sneeze without regard for what else they are doing. Like nursing, say.
4. the cuteness of baby sneezes is potent enough to de-horrible horrifying things, like snot in your cleavage.
5. You can't be your kids' friend because sometimes you have to pick their noses. And as we all know, you can pick your friends...
6. all but 1 of my PMM's has been about wearing snot, and that one was about wearing barf. #gamechange
7. Installed see-the-baby mirror in car. Driving is now COO-fest instead of waa-fest. Zoe is definitely a social critter now.
8. I'm proud of my daughter for figuring out how to suck her thumb. She has been working daily on taming her spastic arm motions and refining her "gig 'em" for three months to arrive at this milestone! You can remind me of this in three years when I'm trying to get her to STOP sucking her thumb.
9. Zoe slept 7 hours straight last night (and counting!). And just like all my friends said I would, I woke up in a panic to make sure she was still breathing...
10. She pulled my hair this morning. Take me down to the Ponytail City...
11. she fell asleep on her tummy and woke up on her back. She doesn't get to lie on the couch again until she can climb onto it her own self.
12. I know I'm a grown up because I just did my laundry BEFORE going to see my folks..
13. Zoe is sleeping in her own crib. How did she get so big?!?!
14. I just let Zoe grab me by the hair, pull me close, and chew on my nose. Insanity IS hereditary, you get it from your children...
15. Greenies: Puppies:: Smashed Bananas: Babies. Truefax.
16. Frozen cookie dough is a totally legitimate short term coping skill.
17. I can stop tears of frustration, pain, loneliness, boredom, and general grumpiness by picking her up and hugging her. I will cherish this superpower every day while I have it.
18. No matter how much chicken gravy or sweet potato you amend it with, pureed chicken feels like pureed chicken on your tongue. Especially when it's hiding under a tempting blob of apple sauce on a baby spoon.
19. the kids' song about how the little one said roll over - I'm crowded/I'm lonely was totally written by some one whose baby had a cold.
20. You know a nursing session with a newborn is done by counting how long between the baby's swallows; you know a nine month old is done when she zrbtts you.

Slackitude

Mothering has really wrecked my triathlon mojo. This, in itself, is not terribly interesting or surprising. Nobody can push their body to shed fat, build endurance, and work faster when they can't tell you if they're going to get 2 or 4 or 6 hours of sleep at night. But what surprises me is how I feel about it. I'm conflicted. Part of me wants to sag into a heap and wear my pajamas all day and snuggle my baby when she sleeps and play with her when she's awake and eat doughnuts and pizza until I'm back in all the pants I just donated to Goodwill. Part of me wants to bootstrap myself up and get back to my bike riding and jogging and swimming and not use this little interlude as an excuse to wreck my season.

Zoe is brand new, she's barely six weeks old right now, and is in NOTHING approximating a routine when it comes to sleep. Some nights, she nods off with me at midnight and sleeps 4 hours at a stretch until morning. Other nights, she just looks at me and cries every time she approaches a horizontal orientation until she finally surrenders around 4 AM.

As of now, the only exercise I can solidly count on having the energy for is a walk, and not a very long walk at that. So that's what I'm doing. And God bless my coach for sticking with me through it and continuing to encourage me to do what I can, when I can, and keeping me accountable when I miss the mark. Every little bit counts, right?

Every time I think my end of the deal is the short one, though, I remember how rough it is for my nieces to even be able to take that walk. They have Mitochondrial Disease and it makes having energy for even basic things like digestion difficult. So, in their honor, I'm going to be taking part (along with the whole family) in a walkathon in February called the "Energy for Life" walk in Houston. If you have a spare nickel, this cause is a good one and the funds will go to researching the causes and potential treatments and cures for a disease that often takes children's lives before they make their teen years. If you can, please do go make a donation. Every little bit counts.