Girls and Horses

I’ve been terrible about blogging lately, so I told myself I could muster a post with at least one picture. That quickly turned into six.

Studio Grandma bought a miniature horse. This post doesn’t contain any pictures of her horse, but hopefully I’ll get to that. At the stables where Grandma’s horse is kept, they have a barn with a pasture full of mamas and babies. We got permission to go in and visit them, and the girls fell in love. This little horse took right to Phaedra and followed her around with such sweet loyalty. Of course, there was much talk directed at Daddy of “Pleeeeeeeeeease can we buy this horse for me?”

Eleanor made friends with the mama.

Life just doesn’t slow down. The kids are growing up so fast. I keep wanting to blog about Curtis and all his many milestones, but I’m so behind I don’t even know where to begin. Over the past month, he has added so many words to his vocabulary. When he first started trying to talk, he said a few easy words, such as “Mommy” and he was fairly good at saying “turn.” Then he learned the word “go,” and he started using it for everything. Go is a very useful word. He could be found to exclaim, “Go, go, go!” And one time, after my mom babysat him, I came home and asked him about the time they had. His response was a long, drawn out, “Goooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo,” having his voice go up and down as if he was having a long conversation with me.

Curtis is a doer. He sees something that needs to get done, and he does it. He loves to help me unload the dishwasher. If I start unloading while he is in his chair, eating, he will demand to get out at once so he won’t miss out on helping me.

I feel like I’m finally coming up for air. Grant went away to Florida for a week at the end of April, and then he was off to class for the weekend the very next week. Among all that, we’ve had Mothers’ Day and our Anniversary and even a major job interview for Grant (we’re still in suspense—grrr).

I’m still trying to get around to some spring cleaning and organization, although it baffles me every year how anyone can manage spring cleaning when I can’t even keep up with the day-to-day.

My calling had a slight change as I’m no longer team teaching my little class of 4-5 year olds. I’m now teaching it all by myself. The main challenge in this is that my sweet little boy does NOT want to go to nursery—not without me, at least. I’ve been up in the night stressing over that one, but so far, my only solution is to ignore everyone else, do things my way, and give him the time he needs to get used to things.

There are so many things I want to do better, so many areas in which I want to improve. I can at least say that I’ve been fairly consistent at working out or going running with friends besides when I have been sick (we’ve had several bouts of sickness this spring in our house). It’s SO nice to have running buddies who consistently motivate me to get out of the house and just do it! I just wish the working out would actually show in my appearance. I’m getting a complex because people at church keep asking me if I’m pregnant. Granted, this time, it was a 4 year old, but it still doesn’t make me feel too good about my body image. The rest of my body isn’t so bad, but I just seem to carry anything extra in my gut. I guess I can’t blame people for making the mistake. I know I need to give up some of my late night munching, but that part is so hard.

Ah, well. Sometimes all I can do is scratch the surface when it comes to all the things I want to accomplish.