white picket fence

three and a half, one and a half

This was going to be a post about messes and whining and how much I detest (DETEST!!) sippy cups. But I can't do it. I can't complain*. They really are good and cute kids most of the time. 

(*Okay, maybe I can complain about one thing? David says the word Mommy at least 500 times a day. I counted and once he said it 37 times in the span of 3 MINUTES. It is probably about the most annoying thing in my life right now.)

Alright, complaint done. Now for some pictures.

Plus, the back of Norah's curly head is my most favorite thing in the entire universe right now. 

drooly & brownie face

In lieu of any "real" content (slash I just don't feel like writing blog posts right now) here are some cute pictures of my hilarious children. Some days it is like HOT MESS central in our house. Drool, food all over the face, neither of them wearing pants, etc. It's fantastic. 

catching up.

Lots of little things to share today. 

1. I took the kids to a kite festival last weekend. I didn't know what to expect but I was pleasantly surprised. Do you know there are professional kite flyers? And they do this thing called "kite ballet"? Hard to describe, but man, I was wowed. The kites really do dance in the air. Lovely to watch. I think the kids were more entertained just looking at huge crowd of new people. And the thing David remembers most is seeing a kid wearing Thomas the Tank Engine boots. But hey, it was a great Saturday afternoon activity. 

2. It's only fair that I do a little follow up on my Lent internet fast. You guys, I kind of failed. The first two weeks went really well, but once I started cheating it just went downhill from there. Overall, I do feel like I improved my relationship with technology. Have you ever gone on vacation and stopped checking twitter or facebook for a few days. . and then you try to catch up after and think, "why again do I normally care about all of this?" I'm feeling a little more like that these days. 

The other issue with not going online all day was that I would totally gorge at night and stay up way too late just surfing. Also not good. So in the end I learned that a little levity, a little wittling down of my google reader and tumblr following, and a healthy dose of moderation are probably the best. As usual, the most common sense approach wins. 

3. Lately both kids attitudes and behavior are on a little cycle. . . a few happy days, a few minor grouchy days, one really horrible day, and repeat. I'm glad that their bad days don't occur simultaneously, which saves my sanity a bit. But the really golden days are when they're both happy at the same time.

Norah is standing on her own, exploring like no one's business, and now that 2 new teeth have poked through, her demeanor has been so sweet and pleasant. Lots of smiles and cuddling now. It's a treat watching her become less of a baby and more of a little person. 

David sure has his ornery moments, but when he's doing well, he's great too. His imagination and creativity with toys always makes me smile. The other day I found him standing at the kitchen counter playing "Angry Birds"... a shallot was the bird, a spoon rest was the launcher, and my kitchen-aid whisk attachment was the structure he was trying to knock down. Honestly. . . could you even make this stuff up? Little kids are amazing. 

 

friday afternoons

Let's count the number of things in these pictures that are probably not ideal. Bed not made. Kids hanging out in parents bed. Kids watching TV. Book on bed indicates I probably wasn't paying full attention to kids at some point. Boy drinking a soda (it's an IZZE though, so really. . . that's not a biggie, right?). Boy drinking a soda in bed. Baby precariously crawling on bed while mom holds camera. 

BUT. It also looks like they are having fun. So that's alright by me. And let's be real. . . sometimes by Friday afternoon the week has worn me out and the only remedy is piling us all into the big bed to watch PBS kids shows and just decompress for a while. Right?

little pieces of December

We're having a quiet month here. I know everyone talks about how intense December is, but for low-key me and my small children, we're keeping it pretty chill these days. We just hang around the house, run small errands, go to the library, watch movies (Emmet Otter's Jug Band Christmas has been a surprising hit with the boy.) I'm intensely grateful that the kids are too small still for school holiday activities. 

My refrigerator happiness.

David's refrigerator happiness (magnetic Nativity Play set).

Current reading stack. Yes, it's mostly cookbooks. And yes, I realize this makes me seem like the ultimate lame housewife. I don't know, I just haven't had the heart for fiction in a while. I tried to read the latest Jonathan Franzen and I sort of felt like he was phoning it in and the characters weren't compelling and it was too long. This coming from someone whose favorite books also function as doorstops, so . . . yeah. I stopped halfway through and I usually hate doing that. 

I have been listening to Tina Fey's Bossypants audiobook, though, and thoroughly enjoying it. It keeps me company in the kitchen on the quiet afternoons when the kids take long naps. And I know, it's such a cliche for a girl like me (brown hair, glasses, kinda funny, kinda smart) to say "Tina Fey! She's just like me!" but I definitely felt that a lot while listening to the book. 

The kid's new favorite activity: hanging out in Norah's crib together. Most adorable thing ever. 

(insert picture of potty training here. I have some cute ones but I feel a little icky posting those on the web, even if they're tasteful or don't show anything. . . you know what I mean?)

So, potty training. I swore up and down before I had kids I would never share this kind of info on the web, but it's been a big part of our life the past few weeks, so here it is. One morning I woke up and decided our almost 3 year old is really too big for diapers. And we went cold turkey. And you know what? It was a huge success. I'm glad I waited because David caught on fast. It's been about 2 and a half weeks and we are officially diaper-free! The unexpected bonus of potty training? We spent so much time in the bathroom that first week that my hair, makeup, and eyebrows have never been better groomed. 

That's been our month. And of course we couldn't be more excited about the next few days of Christmas happiness. 

they love each other. for the most part.

I was looking through my photos from Thanksgiving and noticed this set. The quality isn't great but I love the progression of events. Siblings! Please to enjoy:

Each of them is dealing with their own set of personal baby/toddler problems (teething, sleep, potty training. . . yeah) but together they've been doing pretty good. The more mobile and capable Norah gets, the more fun it is to watch them interact. These kind of scenes of baby-terror are pretty rare. And I'm definitely thankful for that. 

september first 2011

Yes, on the ground there is a rolling pin that David has usurped for sports-related purposes. 

Happy September! I couldn't have dreamed a better day to start this new month. Today was a really, really good family day.

I'm pretty sure September is the best month to be home with pre-school kids. We went to a park today and were the ONLY people there. David splashed around and emptied my coin purse of pennies into a little fountain, with no competition from older kids. The weather is still perfect too. I dread the winter months a little so we're holding on to the last weeks of warm weather. No scarves and pumpkin spice lattes for me, I'm still in the season of kiddie pools and iced coffee. 

ALSO! I tweeted about this earlier today. Through a bizarre convergence of coincidences, we stumbled on an emergency helicopter training today. I cannot convey (without multiple exclamation points and all caps) how A-MAZ-ING it was. We were driving around and saw a helicopter land in a field near a fire department, and since there were emergency personnel everywhere but no one was moving with any kind of urgency, I figured it was a non-emergency so we got out to watch. And not only did a police officer let us get up close to the helicopter (other people were watching too, but I guess small boys get special all-access passes to this kind of stuff), a fireman let David climb around a fire engine, wear a fire hat, play with the steering wheel, and press buttons to his heart's content. Red letter day for a toddler. I even learned a lot. AH. So exciting. This is why I need to put the camera in the diaper bag everyday. 

And will you look at Norah? She is so smiley and happy. She's the perfect happy and content sister counterbalance to David's energetic and (at times) demanding older brother self. We're so lucky to have her.

our first vlog

will you look at that! we made a vlog. it's always fun to see & hear people online so I thought I'd share a little bit of us with you. We ended up doing two, mostly because my personal attention span for watching videos online is about 40 seconds, and we ran into some troubles during the first one. 

 

Norah started out making cute noises and ended up making very upset noises, so we cut this one short. (I love that screen grab btw.)

 

Annnnd, this is the addendum video. 

I hope you enjoyed these. We had fun making them. And David had fun watching them about 50 times this afternoon. What is it about little kids and watching videos of themselves? 

meet my new coworkers

Meet my new coworkers: they're terrible with excel documents and they rarely show up to anything on time. Also I have to change both of their diapers and wipe food off their faces. One of them likes to sing songs to his matchbox cars and the other one is fascinated by a tiny monkey. So basically, my new job is fantastic and I couldn't be happier with my new workplace. 

My mom came to visit and it was such a big help and a great transition into this new lifestyle. (If I could sleep in until 8 everyday and have someone else get up with the boy at 6 am, I'm pretty sure my life would be complete.) I'm slowly starting to fill in the days on our calendar with fun outings and trips to see friends. Usually I'm a pretty low-key mom and I don't love the idea of carting little kids around all day long, but I see the advantages of daily field trips for David's sake, so I'm trying to make the days interesting but still routine.

And even though it's ninety billion degrees outside and sometimes my glasses fog up when we leave the house, we've been spending time playing "hockey" and "baseball" in the driveway (using the terms loosely as we play under David's toddler-ized versions of sports rules) and splashing around in the kiddie pool. And Norah goes with the flow and takes decent naps and is usually pretty agreeable. Everybody wins. 

So I thought you'd enjoy a little report from this side of the work / no work divide. I'm taking it day by day but so far it's as good as I'd anticipated. 

these two

These two have been so sweet together lately. Norah seems to save her biggest smiles for her brother and David is starting to finally get that he needs to be gentle with the baby. I caught this little fleeting moment of sibling happiness on camera and I'm glad that I did. 

And from this morning, a shot of what life with two really looks like. David eating breakfast, Norah hanging in the swing. I do sometimes feel a little bad that Norah tends to get carted around wherever we go and is at the mercy of three people bigger than her. But she does so well with it and I feel like it suits her budding personality: calm, a little serious, and easygoing. She's definitely not as animated as David was as a baby. She sleeps better too, which, oh man, it's the biggest blessing to have with a second baby. Having her around has somehow balanced out all the parts of our family. It's a peaceful feeling.