Picasso's Birthday

We celebrated P's Birthday in true style. Ruby decided a piñata was just what he needed. Filled with candy and dog treats, of course.

If you give a Ruby a messy closet

I took Monday off and spent it with Ruby. After a fun morning planting at Uncle David's house,


I offered Ruby a choice of the park or cleaning out Mommy's closet.

My closet gets sick occasionally, thoriwng up into the hallway. In spite of many all day closet clean-out marathon's, I just can't seem to accept that being orderly with my clothes on a day to day basis is more important than getting into pajamas 10 seconds quicker at the end of the day.

To my surprise and some dismay, she chose the closet cleaning. I quickly realized why as Ruby played the ultimate dress up game.

Beach Lunch

Jamey truly is a master of presentation when it comes to toddler meals as evidenced by Ruby's "Beach lunch"

Cora is making great strides in the world of babydom..

She can bounce in the bouncy seat


She can roll from her front to her back and she started carrots and oatmeal this month. Cora loves to eat (even tequila marinated limes...)

Cora got some great Valentine's from her grandma...

I got the sweetest Valentine of all from Jamey, a day without slanty eyes and shark teeth in his stick figure drawings!

My Daughter the Dungeon Master

Jamey and Ruby love to sit down and draw together. Often, Ruby is dictating the scene which Jamey dutifully draws in his artistic way. I'll often come across one of these gems as I walk through the house without having seen its creation. I've added some captions to the ones I know the most about...

The first is our very own Christmas tale. Jamey claimed a noise in the house was a mouse. I, seeing Ruby's scared face, said "No, there is no mouse in our house." Jamey went on to tell Ruby the only mouse in the house is Francois the Christmas mouse who collects Mommy's hair at night to make his nest. Ruby helped draw the hairs...it's nice to see she has her father's eyes.


Here is the depiction of our Christmas with the usual flattering rendition of me.


I stumbled across this on the coffee table one morning.


Was playing a D&D game with Jamey and my brother (yes, we really are that nerdy). Ruby wanted to join in and quickly grasped the idea of a maze with creatures. She drew the maze and ordered Jamey to draw the encounters to her specifications.


Another random encounter left on our Dining Room table. I'll leave it to your imagination.

Would you like more dirt with that dinner?

For the first time in recorded history, Alabama had a white Christmas! While I was super excited by this, Ruby took it as proof that all Christmas books and shows are correct. "Of course its snowing Mama, it's Christmas morning!"

Ruby was super excited by her red fire truck. I like how gender neutral Ruby is. She took her Tinkerbell fairy dolls and they fought fires all day long. Ruby really got into opening presents this year and it wasn't like last year where we spent two days opening gifts. Partly its because I reined my parents in, but it was also due to Ruby eagerly asking for another present to open. Santa also brought Ruby a basketball goal and a dump truck.


We hosted Christmas dinner which turned out to be exciting. When people showed up, the toilet upstairs had just overflowed, Picasso got out and I dropped a good portion of our dinner on the floor. Luckily, Jamey's family took everything in stride and we still had a great time.

After patiently waiting for the day after Christmas to ensure no one got it for me, I sent my dad to Best Buy to pick me up a Kinect. Dad overheard someone saying that it can be hard to connect the Kinect system with an older XBox so he naturally decided to get us a new XBox. We had a blast with Dance Central and Ruby showed she can really get her groove on.

Happy 13th Anniversary!

Jamey and I went to Atlanta the weekend of our 13th anniversary. We really enjoyed Woodfire Grill and Imperial Fez. For our actual anniversary, we met up with our anniversary buddies, Evan and Yvonne, at Veranda.

After being married for over a decade, I have a new theory on how to rate a healthy marriage. A marriage counselor only has to ask one question to immediately know how much work this couple will be. "What do you fight about?"

A typical marriage might have the following
money
how to raise kids
no time together

Here are some quotes of our top fights these days. All from my perspective but you can derive Jamey's point of view

"There are no magical ants that tesseract to baby formula powder if it is left on the counter between me making the bottle and cleaning up"

"If Prince is so superior to Michael Jackson, how come I would rather listen to actual doves cry then a single album of Prince's but you can put on any Michael Jackson album and have an instant party?"

"If there is a 10th circle of hell for people who open the dishwasher and only take what they immediately need out, I hope I do go there because those sound way more fun than people who don't."

13 years from now I hope we are still picking completely inane things to argue about. Of course, we'll still be arguing about Prince vs. Michael Jackson. Some marriage arguments are eternal.

We Created Our Creators

Recently, we left Ruby with Jamey's mom for an evening of babysitting. Jamey's mom took the opportunity to tell the story of Baby Jesus. If she had warned me, I probably could have predicted how it would go. Then again, maybe not.

Juju: So God sent an angel to Mary that was so bright it hurt to look upon him.
Ruby: I don't like God.
Juju: Of course you like God. He made everything even you and Cora.
Ruby: Cora and I came from my mommy's belly.
Juju: But God created you there and the sky and the earth and EVERYTHING.
Ruby: No he didn't. Robots did.

I actually can guess where she got this idea. On a recent trip to McWayne center, Ruby was obsessed with watching the robots build a car. My mom commented "Robots are neat. They can make almost anything these days."