Bay and I like to take a good half hour after Auggie goes to bed and snuggle. We like to watch Gilmore Girls because it makes us think of Mamie and because Baylor has always loved the opening song.
She remarked the other night “look! My legs are almost as long as yours! My feet are almost as long as yours!”. I realized how long her legs really were and how big those feet were getting.
Don’t grow up too fast little lady. I need my snuggle buddy to fit on my lap a bit longer.
This past weekend marked our 30th something pilgrimage to Coronado, CA. It was as lovely as ever, always a family affair and always so much fun.
This guy capital L LOVED the ocean. We could not keep him out of it. Wave to the face? No biggie. Freezing cold? Not a problem.
Our view from the beach
The only place this guy looks small
Baylor is equally crazy for the ocean and sand castles. I love the urgency on her face to get the water to her sand castle.
Mason looking a little afraid. Rightly so.
We ran into her buddy Tessa – you would have thought they hadn’t seen each other in years…
If this isn’t the perfect “big sister little brother” picture
Auntie Ali, Uncle Gary and Mason looking crabby
The Noni
PW took nap shift one afternoon which left me alone. On the beach. With trashy magazines. And boat drinks. HEAVEN.
The view from our room. Noni goes to great lengths to get joined rooms, beach side, with patios. It is worth every ounce of effort!
The Del at night
Spying on the spectacular beach wedding
This wedding was spectacular. They had chandeliers hanging from the structure and table skirts that looked like beautiful seaweed. It was stunning.
Amazing sunset
After a full day running on the beach, playing in the waves THEN hitting the pool, Baylor rolled over and asked what I was looking at on my phone. I turned to answer her and found this:
So here’s to the end of summer, another great vacation and many many more!
Just try and not smile while watching this
We’ve been had. Swindled. Conned. Tricked. Duped.
And all by a four year old.
It all started a few weeks ago. Baylor started getting up 2-3 times a night to go to the bathroom. She would come into our room and go into our bathroom. I didn’t think anything of it until the number started growing to 6-7 times a night. And then requiring a tuck in. Or a glass of water. Or to sleep in our bed. It was clustered over about 2 hours each night. Just as soon as I would decide that something had to be done, she would sleep through the night. She’s always been a sleep terrorist, but at this age, it’s unacceptable.
During a particularly ugly argument, B broke down crying and said “Mommy please. I just have to go to the bathroom”. It’s not the crying that gets me, it’s the good manners. I decided to take her to the doctor, convinced that there was something physically wrong.
After an examination, the doctor asked Baylor to describe what she does at night. Bay went into great detail about how she gets out of bed, walks by the kitchen, across the carpet in our room into our bathroom, turns on the light, closes the door….all the while the doctor is looking at me with a face that says “yeah, you’re kid’s fine. She’s just trouble”. His suggestion was to tell her that she was not to use our bathroom but rather she needed to use her own bathroom. And she did just that – six times in one night. And left the light on and the door open causing her brother to wake up at 4:45am confused about what he was supposed to be doing. Awake? Asleep? Hungry? He didn’t know. He just knew he was pissed that he was awake and everyone else would be awake too, except B who slept through it all.
After a subsequent conversation with our doctor family friend, I finally agreed that it was behavioral and not physical. But no amount of threats, attention or conversations was stopping the behavior. And my overall appearance is sketchy at best, let alone with little sleep. I was getting desperate.
While at the mall shopping for a birthday gift, Baylor fell in love with everything at the Disney store. And that’s when I settled on bribery. I told her that if she could go four nights without getting up more than once and without waking anyone up, she could pick out anything in the Disney store. She agreed and was excited. We drew out four Mickey Mouse heads on the chalkboard for her to circle each morning that she did what she was asked.
The first night went horribly. She was up multiple times and a fight broke out at 1am trying to get her back to her own bed. But the next three nights went swimmingly. Which is when it dawned on me – we’ve been had. We just bribed a kid to do what she has been doing for years and is perfectly capable of doing. We’re rewarding her for sleeping like she has always done.
And to her, I say well played Baylor. Well played.
I’ve had an epiphany.
Every week I buy boneless, skinless chicken breasts with the intention of tenderizing them, seasoning and then grilling them so that we have fresh and cooked chicken ready to eat.
And more weeks than I care to admit, it goes bad before I can do all of the above.
What happens is it gets to be 5pm and things start to get nuts around our house. It’s too soon to eat dinner, yet people are hungry. Peter’s not due home for at least an hour and kids need baths and the house needs to be cleaned up and Auggie is insisting that his little 25lbs self be held so that he gets a closer look at whatever I’m doing. So my choice is to either have a screaming, crying baby cling to my leg while I pound on some chicken and then sweat to death putting it on the grill….or I let it go. You can see why I waste so much money on raw chicken.
Last week I picked up a rotisserie chicken for dinner at Peter’s request. To my utter delight, both kids dug in and devoured half the chicken. And that’s when it hit me; rotisserie. chicken. It’s cheap ($5 for a whole chicken!), it’s delicious, everyone eats it AND IT’S ALREADY COOKED. I could buy the chicken, tear it apart and have chicken ready to go for lunches and dinners with no effort. And a third of the price.
Cheaper. Easier. Healthy. And everyone eats it. A. Ma. Zing.
WINNER WINNER CHEATER CHICKEN FOR DINNER!!
What do you do when your very favorite family pictures don’t include your newest addition? Why you recreate the exact same pictures. Down to the same clothes. Well, I wore the same thing anyway. Crazy? Maybe. But I’m so thrilled with the result, sign me up for a padded room and straight jacket.
Our good friends and sorority sister Gina and her husband Rene took the family pictures that have hung in our kitchen for the last 4 years. They were taken on our front patio and the colors of the teal bench and yellow flowers just so happened to coordinate with all of our decor.
Since those pictures were taken, Gina and Rene have moved to Seattle. And in addition to missing their presence, we missed their photographic skills! Thankfully I have several talented friends so I asked Natalie, another sorority sister and my little sis from our Alpha Phi days to snap some new pics for us. When she asked what I was wanted to do, I pointed to the wall and said “that. I want that. Exactly”. And so that’s what she did.
Now that I have finally gotten the right color frame, our new family photos are up! By the way – thank you Pottery Barn for changing the shade of white of your standard white frames and then not telling anyone. I bought it. Framed it. And then realized that once the sun goes down, it’s totally obvious that it’s a different color of white. Thankfully Pottery Barn knows they are nuts and happily found me the right shade of frame and exchanged the wrong color despite my lack of receipt and packaging.
So what do you think? 
I couldn’t fit all of my favorites on the wall
So perfectly captures her funny 4 year old self
Natalie’s website will be up and running in the next few weeks – I’ll be sure to post a link just as soon as it’s live. If you just can’t wait to book your session, comment below and I’ll make sure to get you in touch! Thank you Natalie for capturing such great memories for us!
The big man is once again off the charts for height and weight at 31 inches and 25 pounds. He is getting very skilled at “hands up stand up!!” and has even taken a few unassisted steps – yeah for my aching back! Can’t believe it’s almost time to start planning this little stinker’s birthday party.
So long!
Standing! Walking!
Last week marked the first day of prekindergarten for Ms.B. PRE. KINDERGARTEN. I actually didn’t realize that her preschool considered her room pre-k until I read the classroom notes and about had a heart attack. Where did the last 4 years go?! When did she get so big?! Thankfully we are going to wait until she is 6 to pack her off to real kindergarten. Thank goodness. I don’t think my heart could take it yet.
Braided pigtails are her new favorite because that’s how Cinderella wears her hair to bed.
PW does not, however, which is why he’s not in any of these pictures. He claims that he doesn’t enjoy it, but I think the fact that he has a heart attack every time Baylor runs into the street to get candy has something to do with it. Which is why he goes fishing when we go the Livingston Parade.
I, on the other hand, LOVE the parade. I love the rodeo queens. I love the Costco “float” where they throw out rolls of toilet paper. I love the totally random groups of people that roll down the street and call themselves a float. I love the man who drives his truck through with a sign saying that he’s been in the parade for the last 65 consecutive years. I love that you can sit on the sidewalk outside of a bar and legally drink. It’s all around good fun.
The Noni with Ms.B and me with Augg.
Ready to get started!
Love the rodeo queens. Actually, I think was a queen wannabe…
In my defense – it was empty and I didn’t know he was chewing on it…
Baylor, Zoe and Siena trolling for candy
The big man enjoying the wagon to himself
When we saw friends Karen and Patrick in January, Patrick issued PW a put up or shut up on a visit to Chicago. Patrick has been living there for nearly the last decade and Peter is always saying we need to go. You can only make your wife cheer for the Cubs for so long before you actually have to take her to see a game. (side note: I’ve now been to two more major league baseball parks than Peter. Which kills him. )
So, we booked tickets, PMac and Karen’s guest room, and dropped the kiddos at Grandma and Grandpa’s house. The party started at the airport when we decided we had time for margaritas (plural) before our plane ride. Patrick and Karen had planned a full weekend of baseball, great meals, a little sight seeing and a lot of fun. It kind of went like this: arrive, drink, drink, eat, drink, sleep, eat, drink, drink, baseball, driiiiink, eat, drink, eaaaaaat, drink, drink, sleep, repeat. It was, in a word, fantastic.
Game #1, Cubs v Astros. Bleacher seats.
We actually believed that it was going to miss us. We were wrong.
Three hour rain delay felt much shorter with the assistance of many many beer vendors. And a batting helmet full of nachos. No really. Like an actual sized batting helmet. With nachos.
How do I know our friends are professionals? They brought their own ponchos. $0.69 v $10.
Watching the mechanics of rolling back the tarp was so cool.
I love the ingenuity of the people that own the buildings across the street from Wrigley. They remodeled the rooftops with bleachers. Genius.
The ivy. Properly trimmed to keep jerks like me from picking it.
After the game, we headed home to change and then back out to The Loop for dinner at The Girl and the Goat. Reservations in June were booking for August…thank goodness Karen is a smart thinker and booked our reservations in February! It was one of the best meals I’ve ever had. Tapas with amazing ambiance, good wine, great servers, no time to take pictures because we were too busy eating a drinking. But I did manage to snap a picture of the Chicago River from the cab – so pretty.
Saturday brought sunny skies and game #2 – or as PW called them “the really good seats”. We were in the 6th row behind home plate. I’ve rarely seen Peter as excited and happy as he was for the pregame, game and post game.
Panorama of our view
Post game bar crawl. Happy camper.
Our last stop of the night was Red Ivy – an all encompassing Chicago sports bar. We caught game 6 of the Stanley Cup finals and it was a blast. Everyone in the bar was electrified – it would have been hard not to cheer for the Blackhawks.
Duh duh du duh duh du da da da duh duh!!
(Chealsea Dagger. Look it up)
Check out that mullet.
We went home tired, a little hung over but oddly well rested. It was the break from parenting that we very much needed whether we knew it or not. Getting to laugh with old friends, swear, sleep in, drink at will and have conversations that were only inturupted by more food, drinks or funny comments was amazing. Big hugs and thanks to Patrick and Karen for being the most amazing hosts! Can’t wait to see you in the desert in July and for the big day in 2014!!
The Goon Room 