talking

i get more excited than i probably should when maggie talks.

i know this.

it just surprises me. it takes me off guard every time.

like this morning....

me: "let's go get waffles!"

maggie: "fafa"

me: "did you just say waffle??"

maggie: (pointing this time) "fafa"

me: i need to get this on video! where is my camera!? she learned another word! i need a video!

is this what life is supposed to feel like?

to be honest, it used to puzzle me when someone would be telling me a story about how their kid just whipped this word out of thin air and they have no clue where they learned it. all i could think was that doesn't really happen, does it?

for someone who slaves away through hours and hours of speech therapy to just get their kid to use the word "help" and then says meh, close enough when you hear a poorly uttered "bep", it's hard to wrap your head around things like that.

but here's the thing.

apparently, it is normal for kids to learn words on their own.

you know. without like five hundred hours of therapy.

and without me having to repeat the word until it starts to sound weird in my head.

and now i keep calling up my mom and mike and everyone i know and telling them stories about how maggie just whipped a word up out of thin air.

they are probably getting sick of me.

i mean, the other day i caught maggie saying "ball" for the first time and i texted this video to everyone i knew with a caption that read "she learned a new word" and an infinite number of exclamation points.

i cried the other day when i asked maggie to go get shoes and she came back with a mismatched pair in tow. "that's right! you found your shoes!!"
now can you teach your brother how to do that?

sometimes it breaks my heart that the gap between my kids is slowly closing in.

i'm starting to see that there might be a day in the near future where maggie passes her brother up in terms of speech capabilities.

but a lot of times, i almost feel lucky that tennyson is so delayed.

i don't think a lot of parents get the same joy out of talking that i do.

it's just something that happens to their kids, you know. the same way i feel about walking and crawling or getting a new tooth.

it's exciting, and it's fun, but it is also just something that happens.

when my kids learn a new word, i feel pure elation. i feel like dancing and jumping and shouting it out to the whole world.

it is a victory to me.

tennyson has taught me that. he has given me such a fine appreciation for these things. and for that, i'm extremely grateful.

so this is my post about talking.
i know that i'm so excited about it that i could probably make new a post every day. complete with video.
but that's probably overkill, so i'll try not to. though i'm not making any promises.

(nearly) wordless wednesday

when the kids are finally in bed for the night i feel like this:

and also a little like this:

firsts

it has been a big weekend for miss maggie jane.

she said "dada" for the very first time.

it is her first word that she says, not signs.

i must say, she chose a good one for this weekend, with it being father's day and all.

side note: tennyson chose father's day last year to say "dada" for the first time. i guess they know the best gifts in life are free.

and as if first words weren't enough,

we got first steps.

and she sure is proud of herself for this one.

we can't wait to see what the kids have in store for tomorrow.

i don't know how it could possibly top the rest of this weekend.

but more on that later.

wordless wednesday {chocolate face}

wordless wednesday {art}

black and white

most of you know that mike is gone a lot.

like five days, four nights a week.

truth be told, it isn't as hard as i thought it would be.

but i made a goal at the beginning to not get lost in the whirlwind of the weeks.

you know, keep track of what day it was.

and whether or not i had eaten.

and as part of making sure i'm doing that, i've been making sure i keep pulling out my camera.

it's good to have a hobby.

and sometimes, it keeps me sane.

it makes me feel like i'm documenting something real important.

when really i'm just fighting to get tennyson to use the fork by himself...

or to get maggie to go back to sleep at two in the morning...

 or to keep both the kids looking relatively clean.

what i'm left with is a lot of pictures that i honestly don't know what to do with.

so when the kids are all tucked in bed, i spend some time editing.

and then they get filed away in a folder.

it's funny, because here i was tonight sitting here and looking at these pictures of tennyson thinking

when in the world did he get so big?

when i realized, i'd had that thought a million times before.

like when we first brought maggie home from the hospital.

tennyson looked so old and so grown up compared to that tiny little baby.

here we are a year later,

and i'm sitting here thinking about how old they've gotten in only a years time and wishing i could make time slow down a little bit.

because in only a year, i'll look back at my newest black and white picture of them

and it'll stun me how little they are and how old i thought they were.

so here's to hoping.

hoping for time to slow down just a little bit.

because even though mike is gone a lot,

and sometimes i feel like i'm going crazy.

i'm really, really, really going to miss this.