Ten MONTHS????

Oh my. Ten months since I last wrote. That's awesome. I knew we were busy, but I didn't realize it was that busy!

A lot has changed. My little boy is getting bigger, and my big boy is huge! They both walk, talk, sing, argue, use the potty (to varying degrees of mastery), and try my patience on a daily basis. My big boy has started preschool and is slowly getting used to the routine, being away from me, and learning to follow instructions. My little boy has had massive vocabulary explosions and chatters constantly. He's also flirting with sleeping through the night most nights (finally, after 18 months of all night nursings!!).

We are still on the fence (mostly me) about having a third child. My husband is much less undecided than I am...he has moments where he thinks another baby would be nice, but I think about it much more than he does. As time goes on and my two boys get bigger, more independent, and more fun, I find the idea of a newborn much less appealing. And then I see someone at the mall with their brand new baby and get that squeezing aching needing feeling.

I've stopped working as much outside the home. I didn't return to my full time job after mat leave, and went through a phase where I was working at a part time job a lot, and then scaled it back too for better work/family balance. Currently I'm freelance writing as much as I can (which isn't enough) and working odd jobs where I find them. I may return to work part time or even full time soon, but for now being a stay at home mom (SAHM) is working for us. We'll see how things look in a few more months - budgeting is difficult, for sure. I'm hatching a few plans for going back for some re-education, and also keeping an eye out for opportunities in my old field, just in case. The idea is for me to stay home until we have both boys in full time school, but that's still a long time away and I don't know if we can do it, both for financial reasons and reasons of maintaining my sanity.

We've enjoyed a few vacations, some mini ones and one larger one. I have a new stepfather and some stepsiblings and stepnieces.

Right now we have a foster dog staying with us while we look for a new home for her. She's precious, and fitting in really nicely with the other dogs. At least once a day someone mentions adopting her and keeping her forever...but I don't know if that's such a great idea. We'll see how things unfold.

All right...so that is the catch up post. Doesn't sound very interesting, but there have been a lot of smiles, a lot of celebrations, a lot of stresses, and a lot of learning and growing these past ten months. I'll be back soon.