I can't believe how long it's been since I posted. I've recently had a revelation. It's not that I haven't wanted to post. It's that I haven't been able to make much time to do things I enjoy. See, having two kids is a lot more challenging than I thought. Don't get me wrong. The boys are a blessing beyond my wildest dreams. I would not trade them for all the chocolate in the world. They keep me busy and I love every minute of it! It's just that I thought having another baby would be like just adding one. It hasn't quite been like that.

For one thing, I now know that people with only one child should not believe that, just because their only child is turning out okay (so far), that they know what they're doing. Matt & I felt that we've been doing a good job so far, and that we've pretty well got this parenting thing figured out.

Um, yeah.

See, the thing about that is this: God has an incredible sense of humor. And He enjoys zinging a few curveballs at us every now & then. So with somethiing like parenting, just when you think you know what you're doing, He is more than happy to send you a big ball of Heavenly Knock-You-On-Your-Ass Equalizer. And He's laughing while you bumble your way through the whole thing. Surprisingly enough, Matt & I are laughing the whole time, too.

Tyson was such a quiet, mild, still baby. He was perfectly happy to go along with pretty much anything, as long as you had a binky in your pocket and his Wooby (or a reasonable facsimile) to cover his eyes should he need a nap. He never crawled. He was just about through his fourteenth month before he walked. I could put him down on the floor and walk away and know with utter certainty that he would still be there, exactly where I left him, when I returned.

Riley is... a daredevil/Houdini/Magellan. He is go-go-go all the time. If he's not sleeping, he's going. Or eating. I'm not kidding. This kid does not slow down. He learned to crawl the week before Thanksgiving. He learned to pull up to standing the week of Thanksgiving. He learned to move the gates that are strategically placed around our house last week. He figured out how to climb the stairs this week. Non-tension gates are being replaced with tension gates; the dogs have been sequestered in the stairwell; everything that could be potentially dangerous (even things that are permanently located outside the "baby-safe-zone") have been moved to waist high... just in case Riley manages to escape.

I'm exhausted.

One of my [too] many New Year's Resolutions is to make more time to do the things that I enjoy. I'm going to spend one hour each day engaged in some activity simply because I enjoy it. It could be a bubble bath, knitting, spinning, watching paint dry... whatever I feel like doing. As long as it's not for someone else, and it's not something I consider to be work. So, will I be blogging every day? Probably not. Will I be blogging every week. I hope so.

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Anyway, I do have a little knitting going on.

This is the bag that will never. freaking. end. I thought it would be a relatively quick knit. I was wrong. I'm actually much farther into it than this picture shows. I completed the second contrasting solor stripe, and am almost half way through the openwork panel. Of course, I don't like the colorway I chose for said openwork panel, so I'm frogging it tomorrow.

I did start a quick scarf today. I think I may actually finish it tomorrow. It's a gift for someone. I'll post more on that later.

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So, how was your holiday? Our's was fantastic! Matt & I kicked off the season with his brother's annual Ugly Sweater Party. It benefits the Salvation Army's Toys for Tots program.

My sweater weighs approximately 7 pounds from all the beadwork. It is very ugly. You can't actually appreciate it's fabulous ugliness because the person who took this picture apparently cut off the bottom half of it. Matt's was very homey... it needs some extra bling. It's not sparkly at all. I think I'll have to do something about that before next year.

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Christmas morning was fun! Riley really got into tearing the paper. Of course, his goal in tearing the paper was less about getting to the gift inside and more about getting a piece of paper he could then put into his mouth, but, hey... it was a start. Tyson really enjoyed openeing his presents from Santa. His favorite: NHL '09 for the X-box. That Santa is one cool dude.

We celebrated with my family at my dad's house on Christmas Eve, and had Matt's family over for Christmas Day. It was a lot of fun. I received some very nice gifts this year. Matt got me a new crock pot & set of pots-n-pans; My Dad gave me an autographed copy of "The Christmas Sweater" by Glenn Beck (my hero); Tyson gave me alovely necklace that he picked out himself; and I received a couple of gift certificates to Knitorious (an awesome LYS).

For New Year's Eve we stayed in. We're pretty boring. Matt's parents came over & we all watched "An American Carol" and then played Rock Band before celebrating at midnight:
This was the first year that Tyson actually stayed up until midnight. To celebrate we all had sparkling berry grapjuice and lit big-ass sparklers.

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We've had a lot of stuff going on around here. In addition to his recent explorations around the house, Riley is learning sign language. We are using a combination of traditional operant conditioning and "Baby Sing & Sign" (by Anne Meeker Miller, a music therapist in Kansas City).

This is a picture of Riley asking for "more" mashed bananas. We had been working on "more" for a long time, but he just wasn't getting it. I think he was having a little trouble getting his hands to midline. Then I bought the "Baby Sing & Sign" books and he learned it pretty quickly. He loves the songs we've learned so far! He's aways very proud of himself when he learns a new sign. Yay! He has an expressive vocabulary of 4 words, and a receptive vocabulary of three additional words.

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Tyson has been trying his hand at science. Santa brought him his first chemistry set. It's called "Fun, Fizzy, Foamy Science."

He really enjoyed this. It's right up his alley... and his Dad did a very good job of explaining the experiments they did.

Tonight Tyson & I tried making recycled shrinky dinks. I read that you can use #6 plastic, like they use to make take out food containers to make them, so we tried it. Here's what we started with.

Here's what we ended up with.Clearly, not all of the plastic we tried was #6. See, some of it was labelled, but some of it wasn't. I tried to guess based on weight, texture and the sound it made. I missed on a few. The two at the top were ones that I knew were #6, and they turned out great!!! They shrank up perfectly. They got thicker, and stayed clear.
The others just curled up and turned white. Bummer.

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Well, that's all I have for now. That's a lot. Thanks to those readers who made it all the way to the end of this marathon post. Check back again soon. This was fun; blogging is definitely going on my "Me Time" list of things to do.