End of an Era

In September we will have out grown our current cars and so it was time to sell one of our cars and buy a van.

In 2003 I (Paul) bought a 1993 Honda Accord, the same type of car my parents had when I was in high school. It has been a great little car with lots of memories. I remember taking a road trip to Pocatello, ID with Vanessa and my roommate Stephen. We were visiting Vanessa's roommate who had a crush on me so Vanessa and I hadn't gone public with our relationship. Instead we sneakily held hands while Stephen zoned out in the backseat.

That same summer we took another road trip with my brother Mark to Phoenix to visit my sister and meet Vanessa's family for the first time. It was on the way home that I first told each other that we loved each other.

We brought Asher home from the hospital in it...well you get the point. That car has come with us through every step of our lives together.
Well, we got all the little problems fixed in preparation to sell it, and then it was running so well that we figured it didn't make sense to sell that one. Instead we decided that we might as well cash out the value in our 2003 Accord.
So today we traded it in and got a 2005 Honda Odyssey. We had been looking for a van with 8 seats and dual power sliding doors and this was the least expensive of all the ones we had found and it also had leather, 6-disc changer, automatic climate control with three zones, and alloy wheels. Vanessa and I really like it but the kids love it. They think it is Disney Land on wheels. When I got home from work we all sat in it and figured out all the features worked, while the kids climbed from row to row to row and back again. So it is the end of an era, but we are excited to run our two vehicles into the ground and not buy another car for years.

Happenings

Everything has been going really well in our world. I am now well into my second trimester, and FINALLY my morning sickness is subsiding and I am getting some energy back. I was starting to worry that I was just really lazy and that was just how I was going to be forever, but I am feeling more like my old self again which is a relief to my entire family.

I don't know if anyone else has experienced this phenomenon, but my kids seem to coordinate and decide who gets to be naughty and who gets to be nice in any given stage. Asher has been impossible for probably about 6 months now. I love him like crazy, but he hasn't been cooperative, or obedient, he found pleasure in tormenting Maddie, and seemed to refuse to use the toilet just to spite me. conversely, Madeleine has been a little angel. She has been obedient and remorseful when she did something wrong, and was just sweet as can be.

Overnight about two weeks ago, it was like bizarro world and they switched places.

Asher has been so much fun to be around. If I am just taking one kid on an errand, I claim Asher. He is curious and sweet. He tries to make Madeleine happy. Whenever she throws a tantrum, he runs and gets her a glass of water or gets her favorite stuffed animal. He has mostly mastered potty training (after 10 months!!!). He has become a snuggler again, which is really nice. He has also been really excited about the baby and he likes to ask about it.

Madeleine on the other hand, is definitely turning two. Her favorite words now are MINE and NO! She delights in naughtiness. We were at a store with a motorcycle displayed and I told her not to touch it. She looked right at me, ran over to the motorcycle, glowered at me and reached out a finger and touched it. She has also been picking fights with Asher. If he asks us for anything, she immediately yells NO! And he gets so upset, as if she has any say over the matter. It's funny though because at the same time that she is asserting her independence and testing her limits, she has also been really needy. She wants me to be with her all the time.

Being a mom is so interesting. Sometimes I feel like I have the greatest developmental psychology lab in the world.

The weather is starting to turn nice again. It is such a relief to send the kids out to the backyard where they can get dirty and tired like kids should. Asher has been refusing to wear any shoes other than snow boots all winter, even though we only had snow on the ground for about a week. In celebration of spring, we took the kids to get sandals. It was warm outside and Asher was in shorts, but he still refused to wear sandals instead of boots. I bribed him with giving him his shoebox if he would wear his sandals. He agreed and now won't wear anything except for his sandals even though it had been raining for the last two days.