Green Babies

Going home for Thanksgiving was an opportunity for me to not only catch up with family, but to meet up with a couple of friends as well. The weekend after Thanksgiving, my friends Shannon and Gretchen came into Rochester, kids and husbands in tow, and we met up at my mom's house for our first cross-country play date. It's funny because we're all in that new family stage right now - have been married for a few years, all on our first kid (some want more, some do not), new interests include diapers and sippy cups and not so much the bars and cocktails of old. And we're all way into the Green Baby movement.

As a sidenote, I never thought I'd be this mom. You know, the mom who wants the natural-fiber-wearing-cloth-diapering-homemade-organic-food-eating-breastfeeding-never-formula-feeding-baby-sling-riding-wooden-toy-playing-no-TV-watching baby kind of mom. But then again, I guess I'd never put that much thought into it before, until I had a baby and happened upon all these newfound passions. We don't have a totally green baby, as convenience and expense also weigh heavily into the equation, but our baby is most definitely at least a chartreuse. But I digress.

So Shannon and Gretchen are also on the green end of the scale, and as it happens, we all diaper our kids in the same brand of cloth diaper - the beloved BumGenius. Hooray for the BGs. And as it happens, Shannon and I have both been drooling over the cute cute cute pink BGs, which now also come in dark pink, and which our boys will never have (yes, I do know that real men wear pink; however, when baby boys wear pink people just think they're pretty little girls), which Gretchen's daughter Kaiya wears all the time. See, I told you my interests have changed! So, when all the kids got together, we just had to strip them down to just their skivvies and take the cutest-ever boy-girl-boy, blue-pink-blue diaper pictures. Which I'm sure our kids will hate us for one day, but which I will find eternally adorable. And to boot, we realized after the fact that all the kids were playing with their favorite wooden toys...how green are we?!?


And here we are, mommies and babies: Shannon and Will, Gretchen and Kaiya, Evan and I:


Evan, for his part, just adored being around both Kaiya and Will, as seen by his pure fascination in Kaiya, sitting pretty as a princess. Evan had just learned to sit up by himself the day before, and I think he was pretty impressed by how well Kaiya got herself around. (To say nothing of Will, who was cruising around like a mad man, like the one-year-old he is!)

Lots to give thanks for

Here I sit, on Christmas (well, by the time I posted this it's well after Christmas), wrapping paper still in piles on the floor, the family still in PJs, Dave and his Mom making a lamb roast for dinner, Evan happily bouncing in the bouncer, and I realize I have lots to give thanks for.

And I also realize it's time to catch the blog up with a Thanksgiving post. So here goes.

We were excited to head back to Rochester for Thanksgiving this year, for a number of reasons. Thanksgiving is the biggest holiday in my family, when all the aunts and uncles and cousins come from near and far to gather at my Aunt Sue's house for our annual family football game, the Turkey Bowl, and a huge Thanksgiving meal. In recent years the celebration's branched out to include more friends and extended family and new husbands or wives and more recently, new children to add to the mix. It's been hard in the past couple of years to make it to Rochester for the big event, but this year we certainly had to go, as Evan had yet to meet most of his extended family. Another bonus was that my brother and family (including baby #2 who's on the way!) made it back to Rochester too. And we wanted to go back to see Oma - my grandmother - who is almost 87 and still as feisty as ever but not in the best of health, so she could meet Evan. We all piled into my Mom's house for a jam-packed almost-week of family, family, family. Other than the fact that it was freezing which we are so not used to at this point, we had a wonderful time. Evan even got to see his first snowfall - just a few flakes but snow nonetheless!

Our annual Turkey Bowl went well, except that the silly Redskins actually won (every year the Bills take on the Redskins, and as a Bills former team member, it pains me to see the 'Skins win...). We bundled Evan up to take him outside to watch the action, but he decided sleeping in his nice cozy snowsuit was a much better way to spend his time. Maybe next year. Dinner was fabulous, as ever, though I threw Evan under the bus a bit and willingly (happily) ate my Aunt Gail's sticky buns and Chex mix, which I knew to have butter in it but I just couldn't resist as it's such a tradition, and the poor boy broke out in red spots the whole next week. Bad Mommy.



The day after Thanksgiving we all gather at my aunt's again for leftovers, and even more extended family come to visit. This year my half-sister Mary and her son Billy came to Rochester for the occasion, and it was good to see her as usual. We also started a new tradition - the Cousin Line-Up: Generation 2. This is something I used to do growing up with all my cousins on Thanksgiving, which has now been passed down.

And, we all crowded in for an extended family picture...our bunch just keeps growing and growing!

Just about every day we went to visit Oma at her apartment. It was wonderful to see her light up so much with Evan and Landon around, and it was very special indeed to see Oma, Evan's great-grandma, to hold him close for hugs for the first time. My aunt and uncle and cousin Todd also came for a very short visit, and of course met Evan too. Todd sells hats, so any picture of him ever taken features the obligatory hat on his head. At least they're cool hats.

Cousin time and sports galore

November was a month filled with family, friends, and more family. And it just flew by! I swear time just keeps speeding up.

Here are some highlights of the Horne family happenings in November:

My cousin Brett and his fiancee JoEllen rolled through town on their way up to Oregon, where they're moving from Texas. Brett's an Air Force pilot like my brother. Quite the precocious family I have! Evan had a good time showing off his smiles, and we all enjoyed meeting JoEllen. Now we can't wait until their wedding next...April?

That very same weekend, Evan participated in his first 5K -- the Phoenix New Times 10K with 5K Stroller Stroll. It was so nice to actually get out and moving again after our sedentary summer, even though the walk pretty much kicked our butts, sad sad shape that we're in. Evan was even winded though, strong boy. One of the highlights of the race was seeing an awesome walker with Cerebral Palsy hauling a$$ past us all...the best part was, she was wearing a t-shirt that said something like "And I'm not even going to finish last!" So true, so true.

A few days later, I randomly had the day off for Veteran's Day, and so we decided to check out the Phoenix Veteran's Day Parade. It's really pretty extensive; something like the 4th largest Veteran's Day parade in the country or something, so we were duly impressed. Our favorites were the Dancing Grannies...not sure exactly how they fit into Veteran's Day, but they were quite entertaining in all their limber-ness. Wish I had a picture but instead I'll show you this:

And that very same day, Evan turned 5 months old! This month's photo shoot was really cute because it was the first one that Evan really seemed to enjoy. Life is better when you can get your hands on a caterpillar, it seems. And it's funny, because by now, whenever he sees a camera, he's conditioned to put on a big grin and act supercute. It's pretty convenient really.

Then last but not least, when Uncle Jony came back to stay for a few days before heading home to England, we took him and Evan to their first Suns game. In retrospect is was not a shining moment of parenthood to take Evan to such a loud and distracting place, and near his bedtime to boot, but he really did great. He fell right asleep on me when I put him in his sling (LOVE our sling) and other than the buzzer going off and startling the poor kid every few seconds, he actually had a nice little nap!