Florida, day three

Also known as the day I decided not to get back into the water for the rest of the week...



Moving on, quickly...

Florida, day two

Fishing!

Florida, day one...

Scenes from a vacation...

Happy Days

Things I am grateful for this week:

- Watching Brigid dance to Lady Gaga with her stuffed cat and gold purse, after asking for her sunglasses, headband, and tutu. And seeing her get excited when 'Poke!' (Poker Face) comes on.

Also, my kid can name a Lady Gaga song after the opening notes. I'm not sure what this says about my parenting skills...

- The fact that B thinks I look like Snow White. Or she thinks that Snow White looks like me. Whatever it is, every time she sees Snow White somewhere, the excited pointing and the steady stream of 'mom-mom-mom-mom-mom' is pretty entertaining.

So what if my child is delusional? I will love her anyway.

- Steve taking the recycling out last night for this morning's pick-up, since I was too late in getting it out last week, and our garage was being overrun with old magazines and aluminum cans. I am especially grateful for this because I overslept this morning and came pretty close to missing the pick-up for the second straight week.

Yes, if I hadn't stayed up playing gin on my iPad last night, I probably wouldn't have overslept, but I'm going to say it was totally worth it.

- No line at the gas station this morning!

It's the little things that get me, I guess...

- Being able to take a vacation with my family.

Ok, I like the big things, too...

- And most importantly, receiving a cheerful diagnosis from Brigid's cardiologist.

Hands down, that won the week, right there. Yay, B's heart!

Happy Friday, everyone!

My two favorite people...

(My mother-in-law took this last night, before I got home from work. As one of our friends said the first time he saw Brigid, Steve will never be able to blame this one on the mailman, will he?)

A girl and her pony-tail...

Last night, I had a mom moment.

It hit me out of the blue, an idle thought as I looked at Brigid while we were watching Winnie the Pooh on an old VHS tape, internally celebrating the fact that she had actually asked to watch Pooh (the words! they're starting to come! so much excitement!), and admired her curly little pony-tail, all perfectly in place.

And then I thought, 'Wait a second, babies don't have pony-tails. What in the hell happened to my baby?!?!?'.

I find myself having those thoughts a lot these days, it seems.

And while I'm still not sure where that little baby that ran around my house as little as two months ago disappeared to all of a sudden, I'm having an awfully good time with the kid that replaced her.

So, if you need me, I'll be over here trying hard to focus on the fun we're having in the present, instead of wallowing in the fact that the next time I blink, she'll be heading off to college or something.

(Oh, who am I kidding...there will be wallowing. I wouldn't be me if there wasn't. Luckily for B, I'm a good multi-tasker, so we can do both at the same time.)

Heart of the Matter

We headed back to the cardiologist today, to check on the state of Brigid's heart condition...

...and so far, so good!

While the hole is still there (which we knew, since you can hear the murmur clear as anything, just by sticking your ear to the poor kid's chest), it isn't causing any problems with her heart valves, and there doesn't appear to be any chamber enlargement.

And she's just a really great sleeper, not a heart-issue-induced napper, which was almost the only thing that had us worried. And we don't have to go back for two years.

I can't even begin to tell you how grateful I am today...