3.30.2013

he scoots; she strolls


Now that we live in a house with a chalk-able front walk and picnic-able grass there is probably going to be a lot of, "haven't I see these pictures before?" around these parts all spring and summer. Hopefully we'll start adding some backyard kiddie pool and gardening pictures to the mix soon. My garlic in the crisper sprouted so I'm hoping to throw those cloves in the ground today and add blueberry bushes and some other things out back in the coming month...

Baby girl's hair is finally starting to grow a bit. I love her big bald head; at the same time it's exciting to see the beginnings of soft curls start to appear at the nape of her neck. Her strawberry blonde coloring seems to be sticking around as well -- nearly red in certain lights, mousy like mama's in others. She's so beautiful to my eyes and so much like her brother in appearance, yet very much her own fierce self in disposition. I think the dirt on her skirt, the scuffs on her shoes, that ornery tongue, and the light in her eyes tell the story...

Ot is such a b-o-y-boy I suddenly realize. I am so used to referring to him as my toddler, but really I suppose that time has passed. He whips around on his scooter while shooting pretend light sabers "hotter than pizza blood!" and has long, bruised, colt-like boy legs that he unselfconsciously shows off while running around the house in his undies. Dude is a super-hero-battles-obsessed semi-nudest (this thrill for battles and about bad guys is something he picked up at school; something he doesn't exactly understand and that we never encouraged and that kind of horrifies me; so funny how boys are just... boys) and there is no toddling.

In fact, Loretta is the one beginning to toddle.

And time marches on. How bittersweet but sweet nonetheless.

ps. Loretta's apple skirt was a sweet gift from my cherished friend, Alana, and comes from Ashley's Ark.

3.28.2013

currently link up | holy cow

Currently is a weekly link-up hosted by  Randalin of Harvesting Kale and I am super happy to be co-hosting the series with her. I hope that you can participate by writing your own Currently post (using the provided themes or your own) and please join us by linking up. This week, around these parts, we have been...

Feeling a bit less overwhelmed, finally! Still overwhelmed though. ::clacks imaginary castanets::

Imagining that Easter is going to be a quiet, sweet little holiday this weekend and I can't wait. We are dying eggs tomorrow. Visiting Katherine for a picnic and egg hunt Saturday. And maybe just discovering Easter baskets and having a nice picnic outside in our yard on Sunday.

Considering deviled eggs. How I love them so!

Listening to the Keurig brewing for all the coffee I've been guzzling lately. Water running for a handful of baths I've been able to take now that Etta is laying down peacefully at night in the evenings -- her molars seem to have stopped giving her hell, at least for the past few days. I've been reading Raymond Chandler in the bath and it's been a serious dream come true. I realized last night, though, when I entered the dark bathroom and noticed through the window that our neighbors were having a firepit cocktail hour in their backyard, that I could see them super clearly through our bathroom curtains, right down to their fingernail polish, so it seems that in reverse we've been giving them a real peepshow! During daylight hours you can't see a thing through the lace and trees between our houses, but I'm thinking that if they were in the dark and looked into our lighted bathroom they could totally see our bathroom business. Scandal! Temporary opaque curtains were thrown up immediately. I will be no one's "the naked guy" hmmph. 

Moving and shaking things UP! around this blog. Well there are a few fun things coming up soon  that I am pretty excited about including a discount code, giveaway, and some adorable pictures of Otto and Etta playing with custom, handmade dolls by my amazing, creative, and crafty as hell mama friend Kat of the Etsy shop From My Hand to Your Art. I am also starting a once-a-month project-based blog series on the 1st and hopefully every 1st thereafter where I tackle one project at my house with a goal and a budget. I'm excited about this because I'm hoping it motivates me to get some of the things on my to-do list done! And also my house will stop looking like such a train wreck maybe? A lady can hope.

That was this week. Here are next week's themes:
drinking, buying, driving, missing, obsessing

HK

3.26.2013

a family visit

Rob's spring break started on Saturday and we kicked off the week with a visit from his sister, mom, dad, and our two nephews this past weekend. Four little cousins aged four and down is the makings of a cuteness party -- also a party that is hard to photograph all at once and usually has at least one little crier and/or one little napper in the bunch.

I sure miss living near to our family and having everyone in town was just a couple of days of magic.

The next few days will speed by as days do and I am looking forward to maybe taking a little time off of work Friday to spring break it UP with my husband, toddler, and baby. We are thinking of dying eggs Friday afternoon and then I need to throw together some Easter fun for the kids. Otto is at an age where he remembers every sweet detail of the holidays so I need to get on it and pull together a special basket for Easter. He was bonkers for his giant chocolate bunny last year so that's an easy one and then some other special little craft items and non-candy snacks is what I'm thinking.

And then deviled eggs need to happen, because priorities.

3.21.2013

currently link up | emo, overwhelmed, time-obsessed, chocolate



Currently is a weekly link-up hosted by the amazing  Randalin of Harvesting Kale and I am super happy to be co-hosting the series with her. I hope that you can participate by writing your own Currently post (using the provided themes or your own) and please join us by linking up. This week, around these parts, we have been...

Cleaning but just barely keeping up with simple cleaning tasks like the dishes. Somehow this week my non-work hours have all been super jam packed with passing out at the kids' bedtime or with staying up late or getting up stupid early (4:00am today) to do work. My new job requires a lot of writing and concentration which is hard for me to do when I'm in the office (Captain Distracto, at your what? Look! Something shiny!)  so I've been playing catch up at home but that's not a sustainable game plan. I need to figure out how to get my job done when I'm in the office, or start doing a day a week at home to jam out some projects, or... I don't know. I'm just tired and the house is NOT clean, ha, not at all.

Planning (or hoping to start planning soon) a summer trip to Disneyland. Like a Walleyworld style, no frills road trip, but a trip nonetheless! My breath isn't held at all on this. We need to figure out this year AND last year's taxes first. I'm our family's day-to-day accountant but Rob does our taxes and he does them during his spring break so fingers crossed, breaths held, that some kind of magic thing happens where we don't end up stinking broke in a few weeks.

Planting in my mind a really rad backyard garden! I was told that the golden planting rule in this part of the world is to wait to plant your garden until Mother's Day so I'm thinking that would be a really sweet way to spend that day with a trip to a local nursery to pick out some starters and a day in the yard (if the sun cooperates).

Skipping too much. See also: Cleaning. Sometimes you feel like you're drowning in to-dos and not doing enough and all you can do is (??) not take on too many new projects and truck through the projects you've got and hope the overwhelmed feeling slowly goes away. So there's that. Ugh, sorry, I'm not feeling very inspirational this morning. See also: 4am wakeup today AND we're out of coffee creamer. Head: Desk: Head: Desk. I've also been putting off the "trucking through" part lately in order to snuggle with Otto in the mornings instead of waking up to blog, work, clean, or other of "the things". I've had the feeling that he needs a little more focused attention lately and who knows if he's getting what he needs. I hope so. Trying to be a super mom feels like shit sometimes. I'm hoping that only a truly good mom would feel like shit though. Right? Bad moms probably feel awesome about doing a terrible job and Good moms feel like assholes for doing a good-but-could-be-better-always-criticize-self-never-satisfied-NEVER-SATISFIED job. Right? Someone give me a gold star and buy me some damn coffee creamer, please!

Wearing a maxi pad. As always, sorry Dad! You should stop reading the words and just look at the cute pictures of your grandkids. After a year of nursing, and still nursing but less so, I'm having my first period in about two years. So all emo tendencies and inner crying in corners and midnight eating super old frozen forgotten candy bars can get in line to buy me some damn coffee creamer and give me a gold star because hormones!

Look at how cute my kids are. That's about all the inspiration I need to keep my breakdowns confined to the shower and this here blog. This too shall pass. In the mean time, hide your chocolate, because I don't care how freezer burnt it is it is in danger and that danger looks a lot like a 34 year old, exhausted, sun-starved mama.

That was this week. Here are next week's SPRING! themes:
feeling, imagining, considering, listening to, moving

HK

3.17.2013

she conquers forks, what next?

Yesterday at breakfast we handed Loretta a baby fork instead of her usual spoon and were excited to see her go to town with it, making forky motions and getting pretty giddy. It was a dull, plastic, and pretty much useless utensil but she really got into us helping her stab her toast and fruit. So at lunch we dug out some hard core baby silverware to see what she thought: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Fork Master

I wonder if her babysitter has been working on eating with utensils? Or if my girl has been sitting there finger-eating at family meals feeling like a complete heathen and just waiting for us to hand over the tines. Anyways, it was a big surprise to see her stab chicken and bananas and expertly guide them to her mouth. She's getting so big, le sigh. She's also teething and putting us all through the wringer this weekend. How does she have so many teeth? Why is she so mean? Ha. I suppose she is a fierce teether in the same way that she is intense about everything she does. But poor little peanut has the front eight already and seems to be working on some dreaded molars. We could all use a little break from the intensity of it all right about now. Hopefully today will be more chill than yesterday, because yesterday had more than a couple of us in tears.

What's on your Sunday agenda? We're taking Ottobot to a birthday party this afternoon at a pottery painting studio. I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to the outing. The rain and grey skies are back, plus Baby Aggro has been giving us all tension headaches, so it will feel nice to get out of the house and do something fun and creative (on someone else's dime, haha). Otto is giving the little girl Hello Kitty toys and jewelry. Jewelry people! It's my fault but still... jewelry. Gulp.

3.16.2013

bye bye GFC but Bloglovin was always prettier

So I only get around to finding out about blog-world drama on the weekends. I'm tardy to the "OMG GFC is finally dying; wait didn't it already die? Well yeah kinda but now for real, kaput, dead!" party. So I am officially claiming my blog on Bloglovin' where it's been for a while but I never really did anything with it. I actually use my Google reader every now and again so from now on it'll be my Bloglovin' reader that I go-to when I have insomnia. I hope you decide to add Ot and Et to your Bloglovin' roll. In order to claim it they're asking me to post the following message, I'd be honored if you click the link and follow, gracias!

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

And let's all wish a skunk-eyed RIP to GFC. Those morons. We loved you, GFC. You blew it. We're moving on 

3.14.2013

currently link up | pi day



Happy Pi Day! This was Loretta's original due date, a day for Daddy to dork out (because math), and also a day to embrace the pun and eat pie! Good good day.

Currently is a weekly link-up hosted by the chocolate and springtime craving mom  Randalin of Harvesting Kale and I am super happy to be co-hosting the series with her. I hope that you can participate by writing your own Currently post (using the provided themes or your own) and please join us by linking up. This week, around these parts, we have been...

Watching my kids run/toddle around outside, grubby from play, covered in grass stains and sidewalk chalk all over their clothes, and all of that in the sunshine! Now if plums would only come into season the world would be perfect. So even though I have a feeling this is a false little Spring we're having and another frost plus buckets of rain and grey skies are probably on the way, we are just soaking up the warm temps and sunny days while we have them.

Craving exercise. What kind of alien am I? We get a super discount on the gym at work and I'm hoping to make lunchtime boot camps or pilates or just jogging on a treadmill a 1-3 day per week thing. I need to firm this business ::making a weird, awkward gesture to the torso through upper knees area:: up! ::claps, jumps, points at self in mirror:: Maybe I'm just craving coffee?

Looking a bit more like my old self again. Loretta is sort of self-weaning down to just a couple of nursing sessions a day so my bossoms (ahhhhhhh, so sorry Dad, this is probably the post-per-month you decided to read) are back down to a manageable size lately. Unfortunately they seem to become more uneven with each baby, so we are rocking a 32a on the left and a 32c on the right. Oo

Boob shaming FTW! Honestly though I'm feeling more like myself than I have in a while. My hair is growing out. I'm back to a pre-baby weight. BB cream seems to be doing something youthful-time-machine-y to my face, and the sun we've had lately is even kissing my blue/white gecko translucent skin with a teeny bit of color. This girl is on fire!

Loving
my munchkins and their weird, sweet personalities. I took them for their 1 and 4  year checkups, respectively, this week and they are doing great. We do need to follow up on some possible hearing and vision issues with Otto (both minor but both freaking me out) but all in all it was nice to get the thumbs up from the doc. Otto was pretty upset that he would have to get a shot so I did something I rarely do and bribed him to, "just stay calm and be cool, be cool, try to calm down, do you want ice cream? Will ice cream make you calm down? Please calm down! For ice cream! I will give you ice cream!" After the doc, in the Dairy Queen drive thru, Otto said, "Maybe they call her Dare-y Queen because she says (in a royal voice), 'I DARE YOU NOT TO EAT ICE CREAM!'" Ha ha ha. I know *shit my kid says* is usually like 5,000x funnier to the parent, but that is darn sweet, and witty! Bask in my child's awesomeness! :)

Planning a series of home/life improvements for the next 5 months. I am thinking of taking one project on my to-do list per month which feels more manageable than having all of them looming in my face all the time so that I do none of them. They are: living room mantle, kids dress up station, replace pulls on kids dresser, mini-van body work and wash, and mini-makeover our bedroom. I'm going to give myself a budget and deadline for each and hopefully that inspires my inert butt!

That was this week. Here are next week's SPRING! themes:
cleaning, planning, planting, skipping, wearing

HK

3.10.2013

a birthday cake picnic

Loretta's birthday yesterday was a day of many sweet firsts. First birthday. First unassisted steps (yes, really!). First taste of cake. My mom flew from Arizona to be here for the weekend (thank you, Nana Lee) and we kept the day sweet and simple. A quiet present opening in the morning. A trip to Target and then to a local dessert bakery to find just the right cake (confetti semi-sweet cream with real strawberry mousse filling - so pretty and honestly my favorite cake I have ever, ever tasted). Naps all around! A picnic in the yard with lots of chalk drawing and walking up and down the sidewalk with a new walky toy (she ruined her socks, it was the sweetest). Soup and toast dinner for the kids and then Rob and I took a mini date out for a beer while Ot and his Nana watched Curious George and snuck potato chips. A lovely end to Loretta's first amazing year and a sweet way to Spring forward into the next with our little one year old 

3.07.2013

currently link up | we only talk about colds, ever


If you have been reading this blog lately and you are back then I need to call you out for having a weird "reading about boring people with colds" fetish. You are odd! And in luck! Because the saga continues. This week: healthy again, but for how long??? Dun, dun, dunnnnnn...

Currently is a weekly link-up hosted by the amazing, adorable, and crafty! super mom  Randalin of Harvesting Kale and I am super happy to be co-hosting the series with her. I hope that you can participate by writing your own Currently post (using the provided themes or your own) and please join us by linking up. This week, around these parts, we have been...

Eating mashed potatoes. We have a ridiculous box of mashed potato flake packages from CostCo and with a house full of "off" stomachs it's one food that we all seem a-ok with. Bread and potatoes and apples and pears, I feel like I should write a diet book because somehow even though we're all carbing out we (at least Rob and I) are both about 4 pounds lighter than we were last week. Getting stomach bugs pretty much equals the Hollywood Diet. Cool? Nope.

Drinking fountain soda! I don't give an eff if it's just a mix of delicious carcinogen chemicals and fizzy water it's the only thing I wants when I'm not feeling good. I love that shit.

Listening to the slowwww jammmm station again this week (Sade, Al Green, Whitney, Lionel, oh yeahhhh). It's Loretta's favorite and she loves to cuddle and dance together, especially when she's feeling edgy like she was on Tuesday. That's OK because smooth grooves are pretty alright sometimes and cuddle-dancing with that girl is one of my favorite things.

Reading about super heroes and also making up our own stories with Otto. At bedtime lately he's been wanting to make up our stories about the Ninja Turtles...

Sooooo... Otto just came out of his room and threw up on me :( so here we go again. Can't make this stuff up. 

Update: Otto is fine. He seems to have gotten this flu-like super vom headache party 24 hour thing that Rob had, then I had, then Et had... so he's staying home with Rob today. And then hopefully we're all done with "catching things!" this year because oh emmm geeeee.


That was this week. Here are next week's themes:
watching, craving, looking, loving, planning

HK

3.05.2013

we're not dead yet

But this flu and cold season is trying really hard to do us all in. Just when we thought we were over the hump... our stomachs turned. We thought Rob had food poisoning last week and that I had overdone candy over the weekend (yup, since I don't have a gallbladder that can make me really sick if I overdo it, so lame getting old eh?) until last night when poor Loretta lost her lunch. So now we are thinking this must be a thing that is working its way through our poor family. I cannot remember a time before one of us had a cold or other condition. I'm ready for general health again. Do you hear me, Health, you SOB!?!? I'm ready for you to come knocking! Knock already. Ugh.
She was feeling pretty great as my shopping date last week. Can you believe this little sprite will be 1 year old on Saturday? Because I cannot believe it.