Grace turned three yesterday, which means this time three years ago I was spending my day lying in a hospital bed watching TV, feeding Grace, and napping with her snuggled up next to me. Not a bad way to spend your time, in my opinion, especially with a nice nurse to bring you your meals! My hospital time with Peter was moderately traumatic, because he had an infection and was in the special care nursery, but with Grace all was well, and she stayed with me all day, and we pretty much spent the entire time snuggling. Then once we came home, it was such a nice habit, we just kept it -- I think we spent at least half of my maternity leave sleeping together in the recliner!

And now she's three. Unbelievable.

Peter, at 5 and a half, has already pretty much outgrown snuggling. He never asks to sleep in our bed anymore, though he might come in on a Saturday morning to hang out. The time goes by so fast. I'm really trying to make the most of whatever is left of Grace's baby and toddler-hood, because I know in no time at all she'll be in kindergarten, and the time for snuggling with her, singing her to sleep and rocking her will somehow have slipped away without my even noticing it.

Her favorite songs for me to sleep are the Ribbon Song (Scarlet Ribbons, the Harry Belafonte version) and the Cherry Song (The Riddle Song). Those are both songs that my parents sang to me when I was little. As bittersweet as it is to see the kids grow up, there's something very nice about thinking that in 20 or 30 years she and Peter will be singing these songs to their kids.

My lips are chapping, I'm running for my bottle of lotion everytime I wash my hands, and I got my first nose-bleed of the season yesterday. Must mean fall is just around the corner. Unfortunately, temperatures are still in the 80s during the day. If I'm going to deal with the dry skin issues of fall, I want the cool temps, too!!!

On another note, I got to make cupcakes for Grace's 3rd birthday last night! She's having polka-dot cupcakes with purple icing. Half of the cupcakes have pink and white heart candies on top, and the other half have multi-colored flower candies on top. She was very excited this morning when she saw them. We'll have her family birthday on Saturday, when she actually turns three. Last I heard the wish for that cake is Dora the Explorer, but there's a rumor that it might change to Blue's Clues. Hopefully she'll settle on one before I start baking! Gotta love the taste of a 3 year old!

Good things and bad things about this on-line, ultra connected society we live in:

Good: I can sit at my kitchen table and type a blog in when I get back from my morning run.

Bad: My laptop has a quirk where sometimes if it goes to sleep and it's unplugged, when it wakes up the mouse and keyboard are frozen, which means when I leave said table to go make cereal for my son (who, incidentally, may be the only 5 year old to wake up to Tutti Frutti, Good Golly, Miss Molly and Rock Lobster) and me, I lose the wonderful, insightful blog I'd written.

Good: I can get to Blogger from my office, so all is not lost! (and the morning blog was actually just a rant about dogs which probably didn't need to be posted anyway).

OK, so this is my first attempt at a blog. Don't expect too much from me.