These are letters to Jack, my son, and my daughter, Audrey. You have given me the gift of motherhood. This is just a little gift back. I want to share my experiences with you of your childhood from my perspective of watching you grow - of being your Mom.

Saturday, January 03, 2009

Wii Whee!

Jack,

One of the gifts that our family got for Christmas is the Wii and Wii Fit.I had specifically been wanting the Wii Fit to get back in shape after Baby Number 2 comes along. Santa saw that bringing it early would be better. It's the only thing that has been motivating me to get off my butt and do some exercise lately, so I'm really glad for it.But that's only one of the reasons.The other reason is how much fun it has been for all of us to play with as a family.We got you setup on the Wii Fit along with both of your Daddy and me.You LOVE to play the ski jump - finding it most amusing when the skier fails to make the jump and rolls down the jump in a giant snowball.We do this over and over again!You also love to play the Penguin sliding game, but I'm the only one right now that has access to it right now so you sometimes play as me in order to try it out.It leaves you cracking up more when you slide into the water than when you succeed.I love to play bowling with your Daddy, and you will often bowl with us - ignoring the trash talking between the two supposed-adults that you are playing with.I find it strangely motivating, too, with it's Wii ages.Nothing is more insulting to be told by a machine that your physical abilities and performance mean that you are actually in the shape of a much older person.I think my first Wii age was 85. Talk about infuriating! But I'll also be damned if I wasn't back at it the very next day as though I had something to prove.... Anyway, I feel more energetic. Just keeping myself more on the ball is my entire goal here - that and keeping my age below that of 40... that would be nice! :)Well, that AND the entertainment value.Having experienced winters of being pent up inside when you just feel like you want to get out and DO something - this doesn't completely fix that, but it really does make it a LOT easier.And, this evening when you wanted to run in circles around the house - AFTER your Daddy and I were too worn out to even remotely humor you - I turned on Wii Fit, entered you in two short and one distance race and even did one and a half two person races with you before you finally settled in to playing with your cars quietly.I almost tongue-kissed the Wii right there.In the meantime, I love to see you as we play the Wii - giving tips on what we should do and laughing when we end up making a mess of things which would be about 75% of the time.

Do it again!

Love,

Mommy

Friday, January 02, 2009

Sugar and Spice

Jack,

Today we took you to the 20 week ultrasound to find out if your little sibling would be a boy or a girl.

You were betting it was going to be a boy, a little brother.

I think your Daddy and I both kind of thought it would be a girl. Not sure why....

I had told you that we were going to go and see the baby in my belly. Probably, I should have elaborated because I think you were a little surprised when an actual baby wasn't produced. Instead we saw black and white pictures on this screen and - although we would tell you what certain things were - it was hard for you to make out.

You spent a large part of the time spying on the doctors and nurses on the other side of the door. You didn't seem too disappointed to hear that it was a little girl.

It was the last thing they found in checking the scans. I thought the nurse just couldn't get a good position and, towards the end, I said "is the baby not cooperating?" I was afraid we might have to come back to find out later....

But then she said "No.... she's cooperating!"
You wouldn't want to spend the time watching these ultrasound videos unless you were a relative with a strong interest because a lot is hard to make out, but if you stick with it, you can really make out some good clear images after a lot of hard to make out ones.


It was really neat to see and I'm so glad you were there. You are proud that you are going to be a big brother and we celebrated tonight by letting you pick out a cake (carrot cake) and had dessert before we had dinner as a celebration.


It is going to be great to see the family that we grow into but you were the beginning of that and the realization that this is what I want. I am so happy, Sweetie!


Love,

Mommy