Woody's Journal: Craziness!

Since my last post, my kids have started driving, gotten scholarships to Harvard and MIT, respectively, become engaged, and now I am a grandmother.

Okay, so I am exaggerating, but with all of the things I am busy doing, it feels like they have grown 2 years between my posts these days. Gavin is walking like he has been doing it all his life. He started walking more than just a few steps at a time on August 24th. How do I remember that date? It happened to be the day we were in Cincinnati getting ready for my brother's wedding, and I was trying to decorate their wedding cake, so the timing wasn't ideal for me to be worrying about Gavin becoming even MORE mobile. Luckily Duane was there to help out.
Since that day, he has gone from walking to practically running, and he does it with ease now, so you can't even really call it toddling. He is eating finger foods, because he has two more top teeth coming in (for a total of 4 top teeth and 2 bottom teeth, plus a random molar in the back at the top). I am trying to give him a variety of foods, because I would like him to eat more than his sister will eat. (Although her diet of cereal, bacon, pancakes, hot dogs, chicken nuggets, mac 'n' cheese, and pizza doesn't keep her from growing like a weed either.)
Gavin is also attempting to talk more now. He has babbled for quite a while, but he looks at objects now and says distinct "words" as if in an attempt to identify what he is looking at. He can say Mama very clearly, generally with a nice whine in his voice because he is so incredibly sad about something and only Mama can make it right. He ~~yells~~ says "RA-RA!!," which I assume is Rachel, and he also says "Dah-Doo," when he is trying to say "Thank you." Rachel was pretty good about saying thank you early as well, so I am pretty proud that my kids learn their manners early. :) He also holds objects to his ear and says, "Hey-woah." Since I started writing this post 2 months ago (I'm not kidding), he has taken to smacking me in the face and proclaiming, "OW!" I am half-proud he makes the cause-and-effect association there, but it is starting to hurt! He talks in his gibberish quite frequently, which already concerns me because Rachel is talking incessantly, and I had always hear the 2nd child was the quiet one, but Gavin shows no signs of wanting to stay silent.
Around the same time that Gavin started walking, I celebrated my 32nd birthday.It was one of the more low-key birthdays I have had in recent years, because we were all preparing for Doug & Megan's wedding (I actually baked their wedding cakes that day), but it was a good birthday nonetheless. I even got in an early morning run. More than anything, I enjoyed the time I took to reflect on the changes this year has brought -- to me personally, as I have tried to better myself as a person, but also to the lives of so many of my friends and to our family.
Doug & Megan's wedding was wonderful. I really enjoyed being a part of their weekend, and they even gave me a birthday dessert at their rehearsal dinner, which was very touching.
The bowling alley is doing well. We are learning a lot as we go, and Duane has resolved that he wants it to be an investment and not his sole job for quite a while. The more we can keep it an investment and build some profit, the earlier we can retire!
We had a wonderful holiday season this year, although it was fraught with tension about my job. We just went through another major re-organization in an effort to move to digital, and we lost people in the process. One of these days, I may not make it through. In our last re-org in 2009, I was virtually ignored. Reprints isn't exactly a glamorous job, after all. They tend to put me in my little reprint hole and just let me do my thing, which is good, but it pigeon-holes me at times. Should I ever try to move on to something else, my resume is quite specialized. So when we re-orged this year, and I had several people approach me about positions in which they think I would be great, I was shocked and flattered! It makes me nervous, but it is definitely something I should consider.
Duane's new job at Buckeye Boxes is great! We couldn't ask for better treatment from them. They absolutely love him there and he enjoys his 40-hour-a-week job again, which is what we really needed to make the Alley venture successful.
So our holidays were very nice. Rachel was really excited about Christmas this year, which made it so wonderful to share with her. We invested in the Elf on the Shelf, which made it even more fun every morning, as she woke up to find where elf would be that day. She ooohed and ahhhed over decorations, and she made a Christmas list full of things she wanted. Her eyes were wide on Christmas morning as she opened all the gifts Santa brought her. And we shared a wonderful holiday with our extended family as well, and we got a little bit of snow to play in the day after Christmas. I couldn't ask for much more.
I will do a New Year's blog later, reflecting on 2012's resolutions and making my resolutions for 2013. But here are some highlights from this year.