Monday, August 28, 2017
First Day of First Grade!
Sunday, August 27, 2017
Last Week of Summer Vacation.
We've been hanging in this week pretty okay, even without Tim around to help keep this ship sane. It's definitely good that we have plenty of family and friends around - I couldn't do it without all of the dinner mooching I've been doing (yes, more than usual even!) It's especially good to go have dinner with friends with children, because then the kids disappear for an hour and I can breathe a little bit.
Wednesday we went to the Spectrum, ate some pastries from the Hello Kitty Cafe and got a few back to school supplies at Target (a new lunch box for Ellie, a new water bottle for Adam, and then the both whined about wanting what the other got.)
Thursday we went to Fired Up for a clay molding class, as a consolation price after Ellie's ceramics camp for the week got canceled. She built her own little bowl, put some decorations on it, and after it's dried and fired she'll paint it right up. Adam did a little bit of work, then took off for the back yard to drive trucks around and eat his lunch. I'm planning on eating out of his bowl, since I'm the one who actually made it.
We've done a lot of good swimming this week too. Their last lesson was on Tuesday afternoon - we'll definitely be back when the pool warms up in spring, but with Grizz's pool beginning to cool down, investing in swim lessons doesn't seem worthwhile. They do so much better when they can practice in between lessons.
Plus Saturday mornings are for soccer now!
Last night we went out for dinner with Mimi and Poppy, and then this morning we took our scooters down to the trail and rode them up to the park. It was hot, but a good hour of burning off some energy outside of the house. Tim will hopefully arrive at home just as bedtime is upon us (which should be a mess, but it'll be good to see him!) and tomorrow Ellie starts first grade! She's actually going to have the same teacher as she had for kindergarten - they only have two incoming kinder classes this year so they did some shifting of personnel, and we're excited that she has a teacher she knows and loves. I'm also excited that I finally have more than three hours before I have to pick her up every day!
We've done a lot of good swimming this week too. Their last lesson was on Tuesday afternoon - we'll definitely be back when the pool warms up in spring, but with Grizz's pool beginning to cool down, investing in swim lessons doesn't seem worthwhile. They do so much better when they can practice in between lessons.
Last night we went out for dinner with Mimi and Poppy, and then this morning we took our scooters down to the trail and rode them up to the park. It was hot, but a good hour of burning off some energy outside of the house. Tim will hopefully arrive at home just as bedtime is upon us (which should be a mess, but it'll be good to see him!) and tomorrow Ellie starts first grade! She's actually going to have the same teacher as she had for kindergarten - they only have two incoming kinder classes this year so they did some shifting of personnel, and we're excited that she has a teacher she knows and loves. I'm also excited that I finally have more than three hours before I have to pick her up every day!
Tuesday, August 22, 2017
You've Kept Me From the Room Where it Happens..
...FOR THE LAST TIME
Blog hiatus caused by some fantastic vacationing for Tim and myself. The day after the election last year, when I was looking to drown my feelings in ice cream or conspicuous consumption, Becca called me and said "did you see that the Hamilton facebook page announced that they have a new block of seats on sale? We could go in August, between our birthdays." I said "maybe this is the retail therapy we need to make ourselves feel better" and in sync, we both made a sad trombone noise for the nation. But still spent the money on the tickets! And lo, North Korea hasn't bombed us into oblivion quite yet, so we were able to visit the greatest city in the world (in the greatest city in the world!) and see Hamilton, which I have been obsessed with since seeing them on the Tonys at the beginning of 2016. And it was even better than I could have ever hoped. All of the songs seemed new, seeing them acted, seeing them sung live and accompanied by such great dancing and staging and lighting. I was teary through almost the entire thing, just loving the songs, or in amazement that I was really there, or straight up weeping as Alexander Hamilton sings about the death of his son. I'm so glad we were able to go.
It was also Tim's first trip to NYC, so we did our best to cram as much stuff in as possible. We went to the Top of the Rock, visited Central Park, wandered around the West Village and SoHo (where we were lucky to stay in a friend's corporate crash pad for free!) and visited the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Natural History Museum. We also went out for a really lovely birthday dinner at Gramercy Tavern and saw Jimmy Fallon eating only two tables away.
Then I came home by myself, and Tim took a red eye to Germany to work at GamesCon, Europe's biggest video games conference. Red eye, in coach, and when he arrived his suitcase hadn't made it (via a direct flight.) So he spent 33 hours straight awake, and had to also go buy new undies and toiletries, poor guy. He seems to be having a great time though - we were able to video chat with him tonight at 12:30am, and he was awake and having a fun time in the hotel lobby with friends and coworkers. Wearing a shirt he borrowed from someone else, and needing to go back up to his room and wash his socks.
Meanwhile, even after all of their help throughout the summer, Mimi and Gigi continue to keep an eye on me and the kids, because we all know that Tim is the better, more patient parent, and I'm likely to eat my own young, especially on the last week of the summer, and when Ellie's ceramics camp got canceled. Good news, I did not murder Adam even after he spent nap time on Monday pulling paint and drywall off of a corner of his bedroom wall. (In truth, the paint in his room is already slightly damaged from having the baseboards and doors redone during our remodel - if it had been basically any other room in the house, I would have chopped his hands off like some Old Testament punishment...) But we're getting along okay! Yesterday we hung out with the neighbors and then went and had a dinner picnic at the park, and today we had swim lessons and taco Tuesday with Gigi, after the kids spent the morning playing at the park and going out for lunch with Mimi. Tomorrow we start our new music class and tonight I put the kids school calendars into my google calendar, because if I don't have something on my schedule, there is no way I can remember it (today I also finally found out what day Adam starts school, and what Ellie's school hours are. See? I'm getting it all figured out, and SO EARLY.)
Blog hiatus caused by some fantastic vacationing for Tim and myself. The day after the election last year, when I was looking to drown my feelings in ice cream or conspicuous consumption, Becca called me and said "did you see that the Hamilton facebook page announced that they have a new block of seats on sale? We could go in August, between our birthdays." I said "maybe this is the retail therapy we need to make ourselves feel better" and in sync, we both made a sad trombone noise for the nation. But still spent the money on the tickets! And lo, North Korea hasn't bombed us into oblivion quite yet, so we were able to visit the greatest city in the world (in the greatest city in the world!) and see Hamilton, which I have been obsessed with since seeing them on the Tonys at the beginning of 2016. And it was even better than I could have ever hoped. All of the songs seemed new, seeing them acted, seeing them sung live and accompanied by such great dancing and staging and lighting. I was teary through almost the entire thing, just loving the songs, or in amazement that I was really there, or straight up weeping as Alexander Hamilton sings about the death of his son. I'm so glad we were able to go.
It was also Tim's first trip to NYC, so we did our best to cram as much stuff in as possible. We went to the Top of the Rock, visited Central Park, wandered around the West Village and SoHo (where we were lucky to stay in a friend's corporate crash pad for free!) and visited the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Natural History Museum. We also went out for a really lovely birthday dinner at Gramercy Tavern and saw Jimmy Fallon eating only two tables away.
Then I came home by myself, and Tim took a red eye to Germany to work at GamesCon, Europe's biggest video games conference. Red eye, in coach, and when he arrived his suitcase hadn't made it (via a direct flight.) So he spent 33 hours straight awake, and had to also go buy new undies and toiletries, poor guy. He seems to be having a great time though - we were able to video chat with him tonight at 12:30am, and he was awake and having a fun time in the hotel lobby with friends and coworkers. Wearing a shirt he borrowed from someone else, and needing to go back up to his room and wash his socks.
Meanwhile, even after all of their help throughout the summer, Mimi and Gigi continue to keep an eye on me and the kids, because we all know that Tim is the better, more patient parent, and I'm likely to eat my own young, especially on the last week of the summer, and when Ellie's ceramics camp got canceled. Good news, I did not murder Adam even after he spent nap time on Monday pulling paint and drywall off of a corner of his bedroom wall. (In truth, the paint in his room is already slightly damaged from having the baseboards and doors redone during our remodel - if it had been basically any other room in the house, I would have chopped his hands off like some Old Testament punishment...) But we're getting along okay! Yesterday we hung out with the neighbors and then went and had a dinner picnic at the park, and today we had swim lessons and taco Tuesday with Gigi, after the kids spent the morning playing at the park and going out for lunch with Mimi. Tomorrow we start our new music class and tonight I put the kids school calendars into my google calendar, because if I don't have something on my schedule, there is no way I can remember it (today I also finally found out what day Adam starts school, and what Ellie's school hours are. See? I'm getting it all figured out, and SO EARLY.)
Monday, August 7, 2017
Beach Baby, Ball Game.
Friday we skipped YMCA camp to go to our friend Jamie's Surf Camp. Jamie is such an outdoor rock star babe - she surfs, she swims, she's training for a triathalon, she camps, she's a great cook and hostess, and she's basically a beach goddess. She'd been down at Doheney all week with her two girls and various friends and family, and invited us to join on Friday. Gigi came with, which was much, much appreciated, and the kids had a (mostly) wonderful time.
Ellie LOVED it. She was in the water the entire time - the only time I got her out was to feed her a sandwich when she was shivering with blue lips. And Jamie was so great about coaching the kids. She had a couple of surfboards and would plop two kids on it, take them out and give them a shove into a wave, and they could ride all the way to the shore. The girls were even trying to stand up and hang ten. It was awesome. Ellie also got pretty good at boogie boarding.
Adam was hit or miss - he had a huge fit at Gigi and it took me awhile to get him to calm down (needed snacks) and he wasn't into being out in the water, but thankfully Judd showed up just after I'd made him eat a sandwich, so he was able to hold it together and let us stay a little longer.
In short, it was a blast of a day. Love seeing my little girl as a total beach baby. And thankfully, no one got too badly sunburnt.
On Saturday, the kids had a great soccer game. When Adam runs onto the field, he likes to tell us he's being determined, then he freezes for a minute, revs up, and races out onto the pitch with a huge yell. It's hilarious watching him get after it. They've both improved quite a bit, and definitely are doing less crying about it all. After nap time, they went over to Gigi and Grizz's for some swimming and dinner, and mom put them to bed for us so Tim and I could go and see The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time at the Ahmanson (verdict, I liked the production, the acting and staging was great, but I didn't care for the book back in the day, so I didn't care for the play overall.)
Then yesterday we had ladies day out at Angels stadium! Tim and I won four tickets to two games at a charity auction earlier this year, and since we couldn't get Twins tickets, decided to take Gigi and Sara with Ellie and I to watch the Angels versus the A's. Ellie's been to games before, but her last one she was under two - I think I was freshly pregnant with Adam. So this was a much different experience.
IT WAS SO HOT. We had great seats, row E back up off the field, but it was HOT. Miserable hot. As you can see, we brought scarves and made fans and ate ice cream, but in the end, we took advantage of the mostly empty stadium and moved back into the shade. And even then, only survived until the 8th inning because it was a looooong game. We'd already been there for three hours and seen several home runs when we decided to go (right after Mike Trout had a fly out instead of his 1000th hit.) And even then, I'm glad we left when we did, because the A's came back and put six on the board to win the game. Better to leave when the energy is high! (in the stadium. In our party, energy was low and mostly tired. I'd been up at five am to volunteer getting sign ups for the Special Olympics 5K, so I fell asleep last night before 8pm.) And now it's back to our regular week! Dragging Ellie and Adam to the Y in the morning, napping and then going for a swim in the afternoon.
Ellie LOVED it. She was in the water the entire time - the only time I got her out was to feed her a sandwich when she was shivering with blue lips. And Jamie was so great about coaching the kids. She had a couple of surfboards and would plop two kids on it, take them out and give them a shove into a wave, and they could ride all the way to the shore. The girls were even trying to stand up and hang ten. It was awesome. Ellie also got pretty good at boogie boarding.
Adam was hit or miss - he had a huge fit at Gigi and it took me awhile to get him to calm down (needed snacks) and he wasn't into being out in the water, but thankfully Judd showed up just after I'd made him eat a sandwich, so he was able to hold it together and let us stay a little longer.
On Saturday, the kids had a great soccer game. When Adam runs onto the field, he likes to tell us he's being determined, then he freezes for a minute, revs up, and races out onto the pitch with a huge yell. It's hilarious watching him get after it. They've both improved quite a bit, and definitely are doing less crying about it all. After nap time, they went over to Gigi and Grizz's for some swimming and dinner, and mom put them to bed for us so Tim and I could go and see The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time at the Ahmanson (verdict, I liked the production, the acting and staging was great, but I didn't care for the book back in the day, so I didn't care for the play overall.)
Then yesterday we had ladies day out at Angels stadium! Tim and I won four tickets to two games at a charity auction earlier this year, and since we couldn't get Twins tickets, decided to take Gigi and Sara with Ellie and I to watch the Angels versus the A's. Ellie's been to games before, but her last one she was under two - I think I was freshly pregnant with Adam. So this was a much different experience.
Thursday, August 3, 2017
Week at the Y.
This week in keeping everyone entertained, I had everyone signed up for camps at the YMCA. So now we basically live there, because Adam's discovery camp is 9-12 and Ellie's art camp is 1-4. That is bad planning on my part, because while they're having fun I feel like I'm constantly on a deadline to pick someone up or drop someone off, and the hour in between can be tough. We've brought lunch in and ate in the lounge area at the Y, and today we went out, which was fun. The camps are definitely not as intense as oceanography camp, but they're having a good time (and the price is right.)
Plus, while we're living at the Y, I have my morning work out classes, Wednesday evening tap dancing, and the kids have swim lessons twice a week, though Tuesday got canceled because of storms (much crying, of course.) Today though, it's hotter than Hades with blue skies, so I look forward to beaching myself in the wading pool. And by that, I mean we always end up in the deep end while I tread water and Adam jumps on me.
Ellie's now gone two weeks without a mid-day rest (which, in the past year she hasn't always napped, but she usually falls asleep one or two days a week - more often during this summer because we've been busier) and we've pushed bedtime up a little to keep everyone sane and rested. I thought to myself, oh, when school starts we'll be back to a regular schedule, and then I remembered, she'll be a first grader! Nap time will be over! I DID IT, I MADE HER TAKE NAPS ALL THE WAY UNTIL GRADE SCHOOL! And in truth, she's a good sleeper and both kids need a lot of sleep. They get it from their parents, who fall asleep the second we hit the pillow, and could easily sleep 12 hours a night.
Tim and I celebrated our twelfth wedding anniversary this week. For the first time in many years, I actually looked through all of our wedding pictures the night before, and MAN, was it a long time ago! I kept pointing to people and telling Tim "look at how young they look! Look at how young we are!" Now that I'm an actual grown up, it seems wild that people actually threw a party to let two idiots in their very early twenties pledge their lives to each other. JOKES ON YOU, PARENTALS! Really, the joke is on poor Tim. Mimi and Poppy took the kids overnight for us on our anniversary, so we could go out and about - we went and saw Wonder Woman, went out to our favorite restaurant, and then went for a walk on the beach where I lost one of my favorite bracelets and fell on a rock and took a sizable chunk out of my foot. Thus proving that romance is best saved for the young folks.
Plus, while we're living at the Y, I have my morning work out classes, Wednesday evening tap dancing, and the kids have swim lessons twice a week, though Tuesday got canceled because of storms (much crying, of course.) Today though, it's hotter than Hades with blue skies, so I look forward to beaching myself in the wading pool. And by that, I mean we always end up in the deep end while I tread water and Adam jumps on me.
Ellie's now gone two weeks without a mid-day rest (which, in the past year she hasn't always napped, but she usually falls asleep one or two days a week - more often during this summer because we've been busier) and we've pushed bedtime up a little to keep everyone sane and rested. I thought to myself, oh, when school starts we'll be back to a regular schedule, and then I remembered, she'll be a first grader! Nap time will be over! I DID IT, I MADE HER TAKE NAPS ALL THE WAY UNTIL GRADE SCHOOL! And in truth, she's a good sleeper and both kids need a lot of sleep. They get it from their parents, who fall asleep the second we hit the pillow, and could easily sleep 12 hours a night.
Tim and I celebrated our twelfth wedding anniversary this week. For the first time in many years, I actually looked through all of our wedding pictures the night before, and MAN, was it a long time ago! I kept pointing to people and telling Tim "look at how young they look! Look at how young we are!" Now that I'm an actual grown up, it seems wild that people actually threw a party to let two idiots in their very early twenties pledge their lives to each other. JOKES ON YOU, PARENTALS! Really, the joke is on poor Tim. Mimi and Poppy took the kids overnight for us on our anniversary, so we could go out and about - we went and saw Wonder Woman, went out to our favorite restaurant, and then went for a walk on the beach where I lost one of my favorite bracelets and fell on a rock and took a sizable chunk out of my foot. Thus proving that romance is best saved for the young folks.
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