This is going to be a very picture-heavy post!! As usual, I have a long blog-update, but I'll put it after all the pictures, if anyone sticks around that long!! Ok, so I uploaded the pictures smaller this time, but unfortunately their cuteness gets lost in the small picture, so I'm shamelessly telling you that you have to click on the pictures to open them full size, particularly the one of Josh and Jenna, the ones of Jenna jumping on our bed, and the ones of her standing on the car. Again, shamelessly, they're just too cute not to see full size!!

On our nightly post-daycare, pre-dinner walk (I love that it stays light out longer now!!) Jenna will NOT let me help her down the stairs, she HAS to do it herself. And in between steps she likes to pretend she's in prison, apparently!

Who could ever put that face behind bars!?!

Look, over there!! I see sticks!!!

See, Mommy! I told you I found a stick!!

Yuck, apparently sticks don't taste good!!

Just because sticks don't taste good doesn't mean she's willing to let them go... this was her reaction when I took the stick away...

Jenna was also a fan of picking up the leaves and saying "flower!!" After a night or two of telling her that they were leaves, she now calls them by their real name... and she likes to pick them up and carry them to our outside trash can. I'm hoping her love of cleaning translates to cleaning her room one day!

Look how long my hair is getting!!

Over the weekend, we had to stop at Grandpa's house to pick up some stuff. Grandpa wasn't there, but Jenna made sure to wave hi to him. She also took some time to jump on his bed... see the video below.

Grandpa has a box of little animal figurines that Jenna plays with whenever we go to his house... as soon as we walked in, she saw the box and said "Jenna" then "anmals" and pointed to them, demanding to play.

Jenna's new thing, if we're hanging out in her room, is to go to her crib and ask to get in. She's not tired, but she wants to play (SOMEONE cough*Josh*cough taught her to jump in her crib)... Here she is last Friday, with a somewhat devilish smile on her face, as she did her best to ruin the springs on her crib mattress, jumping away!

The next day, we were in her room getting her changed out of her PJ's, when she asked to get in her bed. She was acting like a total goofball, but took a minute out of her playing to give Daddy a quick kiss. This might win the prize for my new favorite picture. (you have to click to enlarge just to see how happy she is)

Did I mention that Jenna LOVES to jump?? especially in mommy and daddy's bed...

(I can't remember having this much fun... click to enlarge)

Did I mention she also loves to climb?? into and out of ANYTHING. If it's climb-able, she's climbing. Here she is trying to climb into our bed...

Uh oh... Mommy caught me...

I took her to Target over the weekend... she will no longer sit in a shopping cart, she immediately climbs out no matter how tightly I strap her in, and she insists on walking in front of me, helping to push the cart. But I turned around for one second to look at something, and when I turn back around, sure enough she's trying to climb into the cart... (you can't tell from the 2D picture, but her left foot is not on the ground, it's dangling in mid-air while her other foot is on the back of the cart)

Of course, I can't really blame Jenna for her love of climbing... as I learned this weekend, her daddy is apparently a bad influence. I left them alone outside for 2 minutes while I ran in to grab the diaper bag, and this is what I found when I came back out...

Uh oh, Daddy, I think she's on to us!!

Throwing her hands up in guilt when she realized they got caught.

I promise, Mommy, it wasn't my idea!! he made me do it!!

Dude, where do you think you're going?? you're gonna leave me up here all alone to take the heat for this!?! we both know it was your idea!!

Looking much more like a child and much less like a baby... I'm sure this won't be her "first day of school" picture for the next 17 years or so, perched on our front steps, wearing her pretty dress, and smiling for the camera... help, how is my little girl growing up so fast?!!?

Back inside after a long day... what started out as an innocent coloring project quickly turned into Jenna taking out some pent up frustration with the brown marker on our white kitchen table... that's why I bought the washable markers :-)

And at the very end of a long day, she likes to remind me that, no matter how adventurous and crazy she can be during the day, she's still just a little girl who loves to cuddle up in mommy and daddy's bed... shortly after this, we took pictures of me and Josh snuggling in bed with her, but I was sick and look too scary to post. She was so sweet and cuddly, though!

As promised, here is the video of Jenna jumping on grandpa's bed. If it's too blurry, I'll try to re-upload tomorrow. She definitely liked his fuzzy blanket. She was long overdue for a nap, so this was the best jumping I could get out of her. I'll have to go back for round 2 before grandpa moves back in May!

as you may gather from many of the pictures/video, Jenna's new favorite activities include jumping and climbing... in fact, if she had her choice, she would probably spend all day every day climbing on something or jumping on something... preferably someone's bed or her crib. Because she is VERY vocal these days, she has no problem telling you what she wants. If she wants to get out of her bed, she'll bribe you to let her into "mommy's bed"... so we'll take her out of her crib, she'll run full speed into our room, climb up onto our bed, and proceed to jump until she can't laugh anymore!!

She has also turned into a little parrott and can repeat everything we say, but she surprises us with the words she knows, the things she can identify, and the things she knows the meaning of... Josh took out a power bar after his work out the other day, and Jenna saw him unwrapping it. To our surprise, she shouts "cereal bar!!" (sounds a bit like ceel bar, but it's definitely cereal bar). Among her other favorites are "seriously" "good girl" and counting... but she can only count to 2. If you ask her to count to 2, she knows 1, 2, and if you're holding 2 of something, or she winds up with a blankey in each hand, she'll shout out 2!! Unfortunately she hasn't mastered 3 yet. When we're walking up the stairs, I'll count them for her... 1, 2, 3, etc. Then she starts counting, but she goes "1, 2...1, 2...1,2..." one day we'll get to 3!! She's also a huge fan of shouting "applesauce!" and "pasta!" and "yogurt!" and "blueberries" or "strawberries" as she watches me make her lunch in the morning. She insists on giving me the play by play of everything I put into her lunch bag.

of course... her verbal skills brought with them quite a temper. In addition to being the sweetest, most loveable little girl (she has become quiet adept at giving hugs and kisses, and she says "i love you" although it sounds like "olive you!") she has developed a ramapant temper if you take away something she wanted, or won't let her do what she wants. When I say temper, I mean full scale, throws herself on the floor, gives you dirty looks while screaming at the top of her lungs, temper tantrums. For the most part, we try to let her get it out of her system, and then ask her to use her words because we can't understand what she wants when she just cries. That usually works and she'll say what she wanted, or ask for something else that she knows she's allowed to do/have. One thing that's rather amusing... I'm beginning to wonder if she has a touch of OCD... on our first floor, right outside the kitchen, is a small bathroom. You have to pass it when you walk from the kitchen to the stairs, or the living room, etc. Jenna runs back and forth a million times a day, but NEVER without stopping to make sure the door to the bathroom is closed. It's usually open just a crack, it's never wide open, but she cannot walk past it without stopping to push it shut. It's cute, but slightly bizarre. She's starting to get equally obsessed with closing the door to the basement, but instead of pushing shut, you have to pull the door towards you, and because the door knob is a bit high for her, the basement door proves more of a challenge. I'm sure she'll have it mastered in no time!

Married off the last Mandy!

I wrote a whole post about Ashley & the wedding, and then I realized most people just come here for pictures... so, pictures first, post second! If you're on facebook, you've seen most of these. (I really need to figure out how to upload the pictures smaller so they don't get all distorted or huge, and so you don't need to click on them to see them full size. I'll work on it!)

The tiny plane you take to get to Bimini


Me & my Dad on the way to the rehearsal dinner


Me & Greg at the Rehearsal Dinner


The Mandy/Kern men... My dad is on the left. His brother, the father of the bride, is 2nd from the right. Their height difference helps explain the height difference between me and Ashley in the next picture!


Me & Ashley at the rehearsal dinner


The Happy Couple.


Hanging out by the pool before the wedding.


Me & my dad before the ceremony.


The ceremony. Not a bad back drop for a wedding!


Here comes the bride...


Do you, Ashley, take Justin.... She said yes.

The last female Mandy cousin got married over the weekend! Fortunately, Greg added a wonderful new Mandy to the family a while back, and there's already another little Mandy on the way to re-populate the world with "Mandy's" (let's just hope the baby gets a lot of Jessica's genes!) ;-)

Wait, this post was supposed to be about Ashley's wedding and it's already been commandeered with digs at my big brother... you can tell I must have been around him recently!! On that note, we were in the Bahamas, http://www.biminibayresort.com/ to be exact, last weekend for Ashley's wedding. The wedding was absolutely beautiful, though I doubt I'll be going back to Bimini anytime soon... getting there requires a flight on a tiny 6 person propeller plane... I was the kid who had to be in the "no rollercoasters" group when Camp Saginaw took us to Hershey Park for the day, so it goes without saying that I don't do well on tiny little propeller planes!! BUT, once we got there, it was a great time.

Still hard to believe that my baby cousin is all grown up and married!! I have so many great memories growing up with Ashley... even though we only saw each other a few times a year, we were the only girls in a family of VERY loud male cousins, so during our family get togethers, she and I were never far apart. Some of my favorite childhood memories involve playing with Ash in Disney World (she was too young to remember this), getting excited when Steve and Ash would come up to Brigantine for Passover, and helping her with the 4 questions cause, even though she was the youngest, she was way too shy as a kid to sing them in front of the whole family (lucky for her, she's grown out of that... me, not so much!), and going on the cruise for Grandmas... oy, 70 birthday, maybe? It was my first cruise (Ashley had been on hundreds, even though she was a whopping 10 years old) so when we had to go up to the deck for muster drill, I had no idea what was going on. Ashley explained it to me, and we sang and danced to the steel band playing a song, I think it's called "Sweat" but I know it as the "a la la la la long, a la la la la long long long long long long..." song. When I was 13-going-on-14, my parents sent my out to Aspen by myself for my birthday weekend, and, despite having a horrible experience with a cancelled flight, sleeping in the denver airport, and taking a 5 hour bus the next day, I had the greatest time with Steve and Ash... we ate at Boogies Diner, got matching (hideous, what were our parents thinking) green felt "Boogies Diner" jackets with tan suede arms (seriously, even recalling these things they sound so ugly. I've got to find a picture!), and went to some restaurant for my birthday where all I remember is the lights in the entire restaurant suddenly going out... I thought it was a power failure, but then the restaurant brought out this light up headband, made me wear it, and the whole restaurant sang happy birthday. There's nothing like trying to learn to ski for the first time while watching your 4-years-younger cousin whipping past you without fear!!

Congratulations, Justin & Ashley!!

another shot...

Apparently everyone still thinks that Jenna looks like Josh... My dad gave me this picture over the weekend, and even though I look a bit dumbfounded here, I still see a resemblance between me and Jenna. Even if you don't, it's still a cute picture worth sharing :-) How 'bout that nice 80's track suit my brother is wearing?

I have a TON of pictures from the Bahamas and the wedding, but I can't upload them from work, so I'll post them later :-)

A Sad Thought.

Normally I take to the blog-waves to share happy stories and cute pictures. Today, I'm sad, so I'm posting something sad. This is going to be a long, rambling post that I'm sure very few people will read, but I'm leaving it here so it will be a part of my blog history and so I'll remember these thoughts.

In an hour, I'm leaving for the airport and will not see Josh or Jenna for 4 days. I get back around midnight on Sunday, so I won't see Jenna until Monday morning. I have never gone that long without seeing her, and I cried when I dropped her off at daycare today. I picked her up for one last hug and she said "Mommy!!" then with her little face so close to mine, she went through her favorite routine... pointing to my eyes and saying "eyes," pointing to my nose and saying "nose," pointing to my mouth and saying "mowf," and then wrapping her arms around my neck for a quick hug. When I put her down to leave, I think she could sense that I was sad, cause she reached out for me and called "Mommy!" but fortunately she loves her daycare teachers and friends, and I know she was fine before I even got to the exit.

Anyway, that's not the sad part. The sad part is what I was thinking about last night. Before you become a parent, the "fear of death" is just about the fear of dying: the fear of being in pain, of not knowing how or when it will happen, of missing your loved ones, etc. After you become a parent, the fear of death changes slightly.

After Jenna went to bed last night, I was rushing to pack for my trip, and laying out several matching outfits for Jenna (Josh is a great father and can do almost anything else with her, but when it comes to actually picking out her matching outfits, not so much. If left to his own devices, he can dress her in one outfit only, a pink adidas warm up suit. To save him from doing laundry every time she spills something, we decided I would lay out several outfit choices ahead of time). Even though he said he didn't need me to, I was also packing up Jenna's lunch and snacks for daycare on Friday, and going through the pantry/freezer to make sure we had everything she would need. All of this got me thinking, morbidly, what if my plane goes down? Fortunately Josh isn't flying with me, so Jenna would still have her daddy, but what would their life be like without me? It's such a horrible thought, and I didn't dwell on it.

That passing thought, however, made me realize how a fear of dying changes once you become a parent. Now, when I think about my plane going down, I don't think for one second about the pain or the fear or the burning or the wreckage... I thought about the pain of leaving Jenna. Of the horrible, impossible notion of never seeing her again, and the devastating pain of knowing she would be losing her Mommy -- thus, the distinction: the fear of death is no longer about fearing the impact death has on you; it becomes sadness and fear over the pain it will cause and the impact it will have on your children. The thought of my child not having her mother is the most painful fear I have about death. (not to imply that there's something so special about ME, personally, but just mothers in general... you can only ever have 1).

What makes me saddest about that thought is thinking about what my mom went through. At the time, I obviously wasn't a mother yet, so I couldn't understand. In fact, my biggest regret in life is that I didn't get the opportunity to tell her "now I get it... I get it all... I understand everything you did, and thought and felt now that I have one of my own." I didn't get to tell her, from a parent's perspective, how much I respect her and appreciate her. Back to the whole fear of death thing, when I tried to talk about difficult things with my mom, towards the end, she didn't want to talk about her, she only wanted to talk about me. I thought it was just her way of distracting herself, deflecting, and to a degree, wanting to make me feel better, wanting me not to be scared - even back then I understood that much, she wanted to protect me as much as possible. But what I didn't quite grasp until last night, now that I can see the situation from a parent's perspective, is that there was another reason for her not wanting to have that Conversation. I have to imagine that, worse than the cancer, worse than any other pain she may have felt, the worst pain my mom was feeling was knowing that she was leaving us behind. As a parent, short of losing a child, I absolutely cannot imagine a single worse feeling in the entire world than knowing you are leaving your child. When I sat down with my mom that night, and tried to have a conversation with her about what was going to happen, she kept changing the subject. It was frustrating beyond belief, and I chalked it up to her mental state at the time. Now I know -- to look in your child's eyes and talk to them about the fact that you would be leaving them behind and causing them pain... I can't continue that thought, because I think of trying to explain that to Jenna one day, and it's too horrible to imagine, so I won't.

Anyway, I'm rambling and for no reason, because hopefully none of this will ever happen, it just made me sad to think about my mom and the pain I know she must have gone through in saying goodbye to her family. There are just so many things I still wish I could say to her.

On a less sad note, I also started thinking about how it feels strange to go out of town without Josh. Since we met on July 4, 2003, I've gone on 4 trips without him (that I can think of) and two don't really count. On July 5, 2003 (the day after we met), I left for Alaska with my family. At the time, he was just the guy who gave me the Alaska guide book. In October 2003, I went to Australia with my family, and by then he was definitely "the one" in my mind... most of my memories of that trip revolve around running to the internet cafe across the street to email him, seeing that he said he missed me from his work email address (a HUGE deal for him, if you know Josh's email tendencies), and boring everyone I spoke to by going on forever about this amazing guy. The only other travels without Josh were quick two-night jaunts to Arizona and Buffalo for work, and they were both several years ago. Since we met, I haven't been around my extended family without Josh, and I know celebrating won't feel the same without him. I've been so focused on missing Jenna that I haven't stopped to think about how big his absence will be at Ashley & Justin's wedding. When I'm laying on the beach, reading my book, and the sun gets so hot that I need to go in the water, but I'm not willing to put my book down, so I bring it into the ocean with me, whose going to make fun of me!? oh, right, my brother, but that's besides the point. Ashley & Justin's wedding will be amazing, that's pretty much the only thing about this weekend that I'm certain about, but it definitely won't be the same without my other (better) half.

Have a great weekend! I'll be back on Monday with pictures from the Bahamas!!!

video

Here's Jenna this weekend... it's long and not very exciting, but if you don't get to see her often, it's just a fun little video of her running around talking and playing. Unfortunately if you have the volume up, you'll be able to hear me much louder than you'll hear her, cause I was talking right behind the camera. Sorry in advance for my annoying voice!!

Nice Weather!!

The weather was so nice this weekend, and we definitely took advantage of it!! We spent a lot of time outside, and Jenna had a blast. I can't wait until spring is here for real!! Jenna did a great job with the time change, too... on Sunday morning she stayed in bed until 8:30, which wound up being 9:30... a new record for her!! Mommy and Daddy enjoyed it as well, to say the least!!

I also have a new video (a very long one!) of Jenna running around outside and chatting over the weekend. I'll try to upload it tonight. Her verbal skills these days are unbelievable (though she clams up around people she doesn't know very well, she saves most of her talking for us, and daycare). She can say things and identify things I didn't know she knew... and her new favorite word is "applesauce." She says it so cute and quick, it sounds like appyass, but it's adorable! She has also turned into quite the girly girl. She loves jewelry and make up, and always wants mommys "neckace" rings, watch, etc. She also loves to put on lipstick/chapstick, and has now taken to putting it on her babydoll as well (whose poor face is now covered in greasy vaseline).

Here are some adorable pictures from the weekend, video to follow soon!

Drinking her first sugar free red bull in Hunt Valley (ok it was just Mommy's empty can, but she cried and cried when I took it away!)



Playing with Max at the Park School playground... Mommy, why is he taking off my shoes??



Greatest. Photograph. Ever. Josh took Jenna on the swings and you should have heard her laughing. Cracking up with reckless abandon and just having the time of her life. You better believe Josh will be spending all of next weekend at that park while Mommy is out of town!!


Really, is there anything better in this world than a daddy and his little girl? I think not.


Jenna has turned into Miss Independent... she will not ride in her stroller, or a cart at the grocery store... She says "walk" until you take her out and let her walk. But it's not good enough to just let her walk along side of you. She wants to push the stroller or cart.


Mommy, get this guy off of here, I want to push it myself!!


Much better!!



Just riding around the parking lot, enjoying the nice weather.

Seriously, how is she only 18 months old? she looks 12 here!!