Loneliness

If I had to chose one word to describe the years we've spent in Rochester, that would be it. Lonely because my husband is a medical resident and loneliness because I have yet to make any day to day friends here. I have a lot of great, fun friends to get together with and have girls nights with, or holiday dinners, or even weekend getaways, but I have not been able to develop a friendship with anyone here to help me get through the day to day grind of being a stay at home mom of young kids. It has been kind of brutal for me. I am a very extroverted person and I thrive on talking and connecting with others. In Virginia I was lucky to have lots of day to day friends, women who I spent time at the park with, or ran or walked with, or had kid play dates with. I'm not the only one here without friends, while Liam had some good little buddies in Virginia, we have not been able to establish any good friends for Liam or Gavin here. When I think about an average week in my life, the majority of it is spent alone with my kids. I go to the gym, alone, I go to the park, alone, I go on walks, alone, I go to the museum, alone, I spend my weekends, alone. Of course my sweet little boys are there with me, and I enjoy them so much, I really do. But they can't fulfill my need for social interaction with other adults. What is the point of all of this lamenting? Partially just to get it out, I'm really feeling the loneliness today. But also to ask for advice, how do you deal with loneliness? I know that at this point, with only a year left here, nothing much is going to change, I have accepted that this is how it will be here. But how do I get through it without oftentimes feeling just crippled by it? Are there any of you out there (who are still actually reading my blog, ha ha, not many I'm sure)who are social animals but find yourselves in a situation where you are alone more than you would like? I have been trying so hard to thrive in this situation, and I don't know that I've been very successful at it. Words of wisdom are certainly appreciated.

Formatting on blogger?

I format all of my posts when I am writing them, and then NONE of it shows up in over half my blogs! Does anyone know why this is happening? I hate seeing all of it just being one jumbled together mess. I also cant figure out how to find the spacing between pictures to comment on them anymore. Is anyone else having these problems? Any advice?

And Gavin is 2

Our darling baby turned two last month. It's so different with Gavin turning two, because since there isn't a new baby joining our family, he still seems like a baby to me. Gavin is basically just pure delight, he can have attitude at times and definitely has strong opinions, but overall he is just smiling, laughing, self entertaining and loving. Gavin loved that there was another birthday going on at our house, but I don't think he quite understood that it was his birthday until he was blowing out his candles. He is a very nurturing boy. I nanny a couple of kids a few hours a week and he loves to take care of the baby. I set the bottle down for a minute and come back to this. He also loves nurturing his "goggy" by brushing her hair. Gavin is very social, he has always been very independent and comfortable in new situations. He loves nursery and child watch at the gym. He blows me a kiss when I leave and greets me with hops, skips and hugs when I pick him up. -Gavin's favorite things: 1.Goodnight Gorilla, Baby Shoes, Blue Hat Green Hat 2.ABC's, Five Little Monkeys, Wheels on the Bus, Sticky Bubble Gum, Caillou theme song "It's me!" 3.Caillou, Sesame Street 4.League of Incredible Vegetables, Letter Factory 5.Mac and Cheese, Blueberries, Pancakes, hot chocolate, pirates booty 6.Matman! (all super heroes are matman) Bobots, choo choo trains, puzzles 7.Coloring, if things get quiet and I can't find Gavin, I will always find him sprawled out on the floor somewhere quietly coloring, it melts my heart for sure. -Gavin does: 1.Rides a tricycle by himself 2.Jumps off of everything (even two inch variations in the sidewalk) and insists that I do to, "jump mommy jump!" 3.Sleeps in a bed, sometimes ends up on the pillows I place on the floor next to his bed. 4.Eats food well and then promptly makes a giant mess, usually involving flipping his plate if I can't catch him in time. He is definitely our messy child. 5.Sings his ABC's. -Gavin says: 1.When he's angry at you for telling him not to do something he blows a raspberry and then roars at you. 2."wake up, wake up mommy! I wanna go downstairs!" this is my morning greeting 3."I LOVE YOU!" He yells this enthusiastically and points at you. 4.He has an angry voice that he uses that is completely different from his regular talking, it sounds a bit like Cookie Monster. 5."Miam""Goggy"(never Roxy)and sometimes "Dammy"(a combination of daddy and mommy) 6."Are you Miam? Let's go Miam!" 7."I wanna coloring". 8.If Liam or someone else is not being nice to him he gets BIG pouty lips going, casts his eyes and head downward and walks in a slumped over Charlie Brown style position toward me. "Miam's not sharing.""Not nice." This pose will literally break your heart and you will be forced to pick him up and squeeze him. There is so much I could say about our little Gavman, but I will stop myself now. He is a blessing and a joy in our lives, can't wait to see what the next year holds for him.

Liam is 4

Liam turned four during our month in Utah, he had a low key birthday party with Gavin and my cousin Megan's cute little girl Jadie in attendance.  It was so much fun.  They made their own personal pizzas, my sweet cousin made an Avengers cake, since he is all about Iron Man these days, and of course they had a blast with all the presents.  I think his favorite part about his birthday was probably just having so much attention and love from mom, dad, gammy and gramps.

At four years old Liam is a sweet, caring, sharing and helpful boy and big brother.  He helps take care of Gavin and of me!  He is always willing to give me a squeeze hug or a cuddle when I need it and loves to help Gavin (okay, MOST of the time:). He is developing new fun skills all the time, singing, writing, and putting his own toast in the toaster (yes!).  His teachers love to tell me about the "high brow" questions Liam asks during circle time, "why are we on the earth?" "how many bones do we have in our bodies?" "why do people's bodies stop working and they die?" "what do these muscles do?" "why can't we see our stomach and heart and bones?" "what makes the sun go up and down?" and on and on and on.  He does NOT however, excel in math and science, ha ha, takes after me I guess!

Liam's favorite things
1. Iron Man/All super heroes/Transformers
2. Megamind, Leap Frog videos, League of Incredible Vegetables
3. Little Boy, Just Like My Daddy, Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, Caps for Sale
4. Little Einsteins theme song, Sticky Bubble Gum, We Are the Champions, Paradise (Coldplay)
5. Mac and Cheese, Broccoli, hot chocolate, Toast, Blueberries, Smoothie, Cookies
6. Red

Liam does
1. Skis by himself, sleds by himself
2. Rides his bike by himself
3. Gets dressed by himself
4. Writes his name
5. Likes to go on runs with us.

Liam says
1. He replaces "M" at the beginning of lots of words still, though no longer at the beginning of his name, resort becomes mesort and distracted becomes mistracted etc.
2. "I'm keeping an eye on you mommy...what does keeping an eye on you mean?"
3. "I'm not pasta hungry I'm COOKIE hungry!"
4. Calls Gavin Gavman
5. "knock knock, whose there, uh oh somebody threw their pants in the snow! ba ha ha"
6. Lots of potty talk!
7. "Mommy you are such a nice mommy because you get me hot chocolate."
8. "I see Gavin's cute little buns!"
9. "Hi daddy, lets wrestle!"
10. Wistfully "I wish I could run faster so I could go running with Daddy!" We take him and Gavin "running" with us now a couple times a week, either around the block or on the indoor track at the gym. It is so fun.

I think four is going to be a really fun year with Liam, I can't wait to go on bike rides with him this summer and just be outside exploring with him.  I feel so thankful that I get to spend my days with him.

Caps for Sale

At the beginning of January we fled our busy lives to take a working vacation in Heber City, Utah at my parents house. Ryan was actually working at the Park City hospital for his elective month, but since he was only working about 40 hours a week, it seemed like a vacation to him! For me obviously it was awesome to have help with the boys, to hang out with my parents a ton, and be able to take a nap whenever I wanted, Ryan and I slept sooo much that month, it was amazing. The boys were in heaven spending so much time with family, they even got to spend a week with Ryan's family when they came for a visit. More on all of that later, for now, just a video of Liam acting out his new favorite book at my parent's house, "Caps for Sale", it is one of my favorites from childhood so I requested it from my mom for Christmas. I was glad to see both boys loved it as much as I do.

For your viewing pleasure

Gavin is at the age where everything he says and does is adorable. Smiling and laughing? Adorable. Throwing a massive tantrum? Adorable. Its just how it is for now. So here are a couple of my favorite videos of him being adorable that I took back in December. Here he is singing his favorite Christmas song. For a couple of weeks there almost every morning I would wake up to the sound of him singing this next one, it was a pretty great way to wake up. He loves me! He really loves me!

Out on the town, in pajamas

The day following Christmas Ryan was actually supposed to have off, but he was on call, and some loser resident "called in sick" that day, it was definitely the nail in the coffin for us, I was so overwhelmed by loneliness by then and we were both so sad that our plans for that day to do some of the activities we couldn't on Christmas since Ryan needed to sleep off his night shift, still couldn't be done. I felt a need to get out of the house a lot, but apparently not a need to put actual clothes on my kids or do their hair. First we went on a walk to Donuts Delite, a cute little place around the corner from our house. It is so funny to me how kids eat donuts frosting first. Everyone in the restaurant was getting a pretty big kick out of these two crazy monkeys. Then out of desperation I took them to the mall the day after Christmas! It was actually not that bad, and in a Rochester winter these are the activities you have to resort to just to get out of your house. We just went for the play area, I can't figure out why as it is so small, but the boys just love this little play area, probably all the energy from the other kids. Gavin is nothing if not confident, he always goes straight to the top of this structure and then defends his position with passion pushing away any kids who threaten his position, it cracked me up to see him holding off these much bigger kids. Kids are hilarious.