Monday, July 30, 2018

Attention Campers!

Ellie and Lexi are half way through their two weeks at day camp, and having a blast. The camp is 9-3 and it's all outside, all day. They've done archery, they've skate boarded, they've ridden horses, they've had a lot of fun just playing outside in the water. I picked them up the first day and asked if they had any camp nicknames yet. They were incredulous in their denial, and then told me "our counselors names are Mangia and Comet. And the head person, her name is Toaster, which is short for Brave Little Toaster. Those are their real names." Okay girls, whatever you say! They've been told that the camp only hires people with odd names, and boy howdy do they believe it.

They're having a great time - every day they're happy and tired, and with our commune parenting going on, they usually get to hang out until 5pm or later every day, and yet, cry when we tell them that we can't do group dinner, or that we have to take Lexi home. Gigi and Grizz have graciously opened their pool to us in the afternoons, which is a great treat after a long hot day.


We also went and got gelato one day, also a wonderful treat.

We also had a fun weekend - had a big pool party on Friday night (I'm amazed my children didn't fall asleep in the water) and then Saturday morning they had swim lessons and then we headed down to the Laguna Beach Ruby's for a Special Olympics Tip-A-Cop.


It was a really fantastic morning - lots of officers, lots of great athletes, and then a local exotic car dealership brought over a bunch of fancy cars. There were literally millions of dollars worth of horsepower out in the small, PCH-adjacent parking lot. Oh, and there was face painting, obviously.

From there, down to Oceanside to celebrate Coco's second birthday and hang out with the cousins.
What more could you want than all of these sweet little faces? Adam was very enamored with Coco. He's so sweet when it comes to smaller children and animals (I love how he always calls Taco "Taco Baby" and coos at him.)

Yesterday we grabbed Gigi home from the airport and did some swimming, and then Tim and I ditched the kids with Julia, once our little lady flower girl, so that we could go out to dinner for our anniversary.

Lucky Number 13!

Monday, July 23, 2018

Another Gross Milestone.

Apparently, this summer I'm checking horrible things off my parenting bucket list/worst case scenario chart. Stitches? Check! Head lice? CHECK. GROSS. Ellie's been itching her head for a few weeks now - most of the summer really. I've looked at her scalp, mom's looked at her scalp, Eileen has looked at her scalp. Probably a solid dozen times over the past few weeks and seen nothing, until Friday, when mom saw one crawling on her. HORF.

The bad news is that you still have to burn your house to the ground to be sure the lice are gone. Just kidding - it's a lot of vacuuming and running the washing machine (RIP Mom's washer, ugh) and either bagging soft goods or running them through the dryer. The good news is that the most effective way of ending a lice infestation is to clean the scalp of all nits and eggs, and they have salons where you can go and pay a nice lady to scrape your scalp like she's trying to tan a piece of leather. It took her ninety minutes to clean me and the kids - if I'd been trying to do it by myself it would have taken me twice as long to do Adam's head. Then we had to sleep with a bunch of oils on our head to smother anything that might still be lurking, and the kids were so good about having their beds stripped, new quilts put on and being made to sleep on a towel so that they didn't stain their bedding.

We've all been cleaning like crazy people, so hopefully we're good to go. Though, much like stitches, we could easily get lice again, though maybe I'll turn into one of those germaphobes who won't let their kids share hair brushes. Gigi already got Ellie her own hair brush for their house, for when we're brushing out her rats nest after swimming.

Ellie started camp this week - I look forward to her being totally exhausted and happy the next two weeks, spending all day every day with Lexi. She finished up her last stint of diving lessons (for now) and really came a long way in eight lessons!


Meanwhile, Adam has gotten a lot of his own skills this year. Last summer, he'd scream CANNYBALL and then just jump in. Now he knows the name of his jump, AND actually makes himself into a ball.

My baby! Growing right up.

Thursday, July 19, 2018

Fun Parents.

This has been our last week before the kids start going to their camps, and so everyone's been trying to get as much swimming and lazing it.

Last Friday, I left for Chicago for a long weekend to hang out with Becca and Brian, Benjy and new baby Hazel. No real plans on the agenda, just being a third adult in the house and lending my hands where I could (oh, you need me to hold this sleeping baby and smell her head while you shower? Twist my arm, why don't you?) I remember how wonderful it was when Becca stayed with us after each of our kids was born, and I'm glad I was able to do the same for her.



Clearly a struggle, but someone has to do it. It was also a good reality check about my own kids. They're frustrating, sure, but they're not quite as irrational and hard to deal with as a newborn and a two and a half year old. Benjy would be giving his parents the business about bedtime, and I'd be in the other room trying not to laugh out loud about the ridiculousness of it all, even though when Adam pulls the same kind of crap with me, it takes all I have not to just lock him in a cage under the house (I would make him dig a crawl space first, downside of not having a basement.)

Meanwhile, Tim was able to take the time off from work and stay home and be Fun Dad. Which, turns out Fun Dad Tim is basically college Tim - seeing as many movies in the theater as possible and eating fast food. Whatever works, right? They saw the Incredibles 2 and Hotel Transylvania 3, they got to have Happy Meals and sleep over one night at Gigi's house, and spent some time hanging out with Mimi and Poppy as well. Plus met friends for pizza at the park on Sunday night, which everyone reported was a blast. I appreciate that Tim gives me no guff when I book my plane tickets - I think it helps that he remembers too what a blessing it was to have Becca come and sit with me when I was in the depths of post-partum hell.

Not to be out done by Fun Dad, I did my best Fun Mom impression yesterday. Kristen and I took the kids up to LA to bum around Miracle Mile and all the museums for the day. Again, I'm grateful my kids are the age they are - it was nice to know we could all power through without a nap. The girls can wear their safety vests (they make the adult seat belts go correctly across a smaller body) so that they can sit in the third row of Kristen's car and we could all go together. She drove - I threw snacks back to the kids.

We started at the Petersen Museum, which I thought the car loving boys would really dig. I worked there from 2006-2008, and my last week was actually exactly ten years ago this week. They've done a total renovation, inside and outside, since I left, so it was quite a trip to see how different things were, and what's still familiar. The biggest downside is they took out the first floor Streetscape exhibit, which was about the history of the car in Los Angeles. And they've made the vault something you can pay to tour on the regular, so it felt like a lot of the most interesting cars were downstairs, for $30 more a person (and our kids were too young to go on the tour anyways.) But the kids had a great time looking at everything - they mostly loved the dates on the vehicles and figuring out how old I was and Kristen was when whatever car was built. And they loved the kids area, especially coloring, and building lego cars to race.




I feel like the amazement on my kids' face when I told them this used to be my office is probably the coolest I'll ever be to them.

Afterwards, we went over to LACMA. I hadn't realized that it's closed on Wednesdays, so we didn't go inside. Which was fine, the kids were starting to get tired and crabby, and being at Urban Light and Levitated Mass is probably enough weird art stuff for them at this age. We also peeked at one of the Koontz statues, so plenty of goofball times.





We also walked around the outside of the La Brea tarpits and learned about all of the creatures that met their death there.

Here are the girls being sad about the mammoths. Again - another one where the outside part is almost as good as the inside museum at this age and time of day.

Afterwards, we took them to my favorite restaurant (now Ellie's favorite as well) Bottega Louie, for dessert snacks and a small happy hour break for the moms. The girls were delighted to have their own table, and I overheard them toasting to "a long day." Kristen and I cheered to the same.

They all went nuts looking at the display of macroons, and then three out of four said that the cookies were gross - the girls didn't like the filling inside (vanilla frosting!) and Judd didn't like that the cookie was crumbly. Adam shoved his right into his pie hole. They did great on the drive back, and traffic wasn't too awful. I got to show them the building I worked in right after grad school, and the building that I was in right before I "retired." It was like a tour of my young, professional years! (minus all of the really wretched temp jobs, thankfully.) Fun Mom day, showing them back when I was actually fun, and not yet a mom.

Tim picked up Mexican food for us to eat upon arrival home, and then the kids cried when we told them it was time to go - sometimes twelve hours straight with your bestie isn't enough, I get it.

Thursday, July 5, 2018

Digging the Diving Queen

The nice part of summer is the opportunity to sign the kids up for whatever activity floats their boat. Some of it, like camp, is as much for my benefit as theirs, obviously, but some of it is just for fun, since they don't have school. Gigi found a little ad for a diving class at the Y closest to her in a local rag, and Ellie said she'd be interested.

And she's killing it. From being completely unable to dive, she's going in both front and backwards, and she's bravely gone and tossed herself off the 5 meter platform any chance she's gotten. The classes are offered by a local diving club that does do competitions, but the vibe at her lessons is very laid back and very positive. The instructors praise each kid for each dive while also giving them a pointer for further improvement.

Please to enjoy all of these videos I took!








Camp Ford.

Before summer started, Mimi and Poppy offered to take the kids for a long weekend, and began planning their first session of Camp Ford. It worked out well, because Tim and I had a long weekend where we had two pieces of live theater to see in LA, one on Saturday night, one on Sunday, so if our kids were already having fun with their grandparents, we could spend our money on a hotel room instead of babysitters and gas money.

Ellie designed shirts, and Aunt Debbie made her vision come to life.


Then they wore them all weekend while doing things like:

Duffy boat rides!

Bicycle rides!


Swimming followed by Harry Potter dinner parties!

Book club and water fights with assistant counselor Jacob!

Running way to join a bunch of pirate scallywags at the Pirate Dinner Theater!

And not pictured, also a day at the water park.

Meanwhile, we hung out at the place where we first met, and slept in a bunch. Everyone camper had a good time!