Father's Day

We had a nice Father's Day this year, very low-key as Joe likes it. He made us a pancake breakfast and then we headed over to the local wading pool after naptime and capped it off with dinner at Grandma and Papa's house. The boys had an awesome time at the pool. It was their first trip of the year, and both had forgotten how much they love the water. AJ asked to stay until it got dark and David was shrieking with delight (not to the delight of our fellow pool goers). Which made it so frustrating that they both behaved so badly at the end. Despite me trying to set up the transition (boys we are leaving in 5 minutes...4 minutes.., etc.), they both were awful when it was time to go, which was deflating as a parent because you want to be able to do fun things but it is not encouraging a repeat performance when they melt down like that.

On the bright side of things, sissy was delightful and enjoyed her first trip to the pool immensely. She looked adorable in her little pink suit with the rainbow ruffles and was content to hang out in the pool for over an hour bobbing and splashing as she enjoyed being able to practice her walking with her increased buoyancy.

Julia!

There has been way too little of Julia on this blog as of late. It blows my socks off to realize that she is seven months old. The first three months I got to enjoy every minute of her presence. This maternity leave was so much easier for me than David's, because we had our full time nanny, L., so I could spend the mornings cuddling with Julia while L. took the boys to preschool and then enjoy lunch and afternoon time with the boys while Julia napped. It was this precious little bubble of time when I was able to focus completely on the kids without worrying about work. I felt like I knew Julia's little details from her sleepy and hungry signs to her newest facial expressions.

Once I went back to work, time became much more of a blur and there are days when I only get 30 minutes with Julia when she is awake. In a way, I still see her as being three months old still. But she is sitting up, laughing often and even starting to feed herself. I am constantly amazed at what a contented baby she is. As long as she is near other people, she rarely cries and is happy just to watch the goings on of those around her. Julia has a great sense of humor and loves to laugh. She laughs at the goofy little things that make most babies laugh, like fake sneezes and exaggerated high-fives. But what makes her laugh the most is attention of any kind from her big brothers. AJ will bump Julia's tummy with his head and she will laugh uproariously. Davey will say "hi, shiss-shee" (his word for sissy) and she will giggle and giggle.

Seven has been a big month for Julia so far. She learned to sit independently and got her first tooth, the bottom middle tooth on her left side. She is also "swimming" on the floor when you put her on her tummy, so I think she might crawl here soon. The photo features Julia showing off that new tooth.

Birthday Fun

We had big plans for a pool party this year for AJ's birthday. I got organized and rented out the local wading pool two months in advance, which pretty much guaranteed that we would have bad weather. And sure enough, after a week of temps in the 90s, Saturday rolled around with a high of 58 and, well, as they say, the best laid plans. So we scrambled around and moved it to our backyard. I spent the wee hours of the night before researching kids' party games on the Internet and came up with seven games that I thought would take at least an hour. Due to AJ's current obsession with superheros, we had a superhero theme and so we had the kids decorate capes, play pin-spiderman-on-the-web, play find the hidden superheros around the yard, play Superhero bingo and pretend they were the bad guys to throw water balloons at paper Batmen and Spidermen.

As anyone who has ever hosted a kids' birthday party before will know, 30 minutes later the kids had whipped through those games faster than fast. So we improvised as I read the kids a Superhero book and then stuffed boxes of raisins into the firetruck pinata from last year's birthday party and let the kids whack at that for a good 15 minutes. By the end of the party, I was exhausted from trying to keep seven kids entertained. Kudos to preschool teachers who do it every day. Fortunately, all of the attendees and their parents were incredibly gracious about the change of venue and humored us by playing along with the games and encouraging their kids to have fun.

My favorite moment of the party came when the kids finished eating pizza and we decided to just serve the birthday cake (Spiderman, of course) on the coffee table instead of clearing all of the kid mess off the kitchen table. So the kids all gathered around and thought it was pretty neat to be allowed to eat cake off the coffee table. There were enough kid-sized chairs for almost everyone, but not Davey. Not one to miss out on a party, he dragged his kitchen table chair over and played King Davey sitting on his throne in front of all of his subjects. See photos above.

AJ's favorite moment at the party this year was definitely opening the gifts, and his favorite had to be the Ironman glove that shoots real darts at the touch of a button. If you come to our house and hear a "pow!" noise, I suggest you duck or jump to the side. AJ also loved the water balloons (explosions + water = awesomeness.)

When the party was over, I asked AJ if he had a good birthday. It seems that as long as a party has cake and balloons, it is a guaranteed hit.

Thanks to everyone in the village who helped pull off the improvised birthday party, including Papa and Grandma Francie for helping with the balloons and food, my friend, Ali, for making the pin-the-Spiderman game and Pops and Susan for filling a bazillion water balloons.

The photos are of the Spiderman cake (tilt your head to the right--it is oriented wrong, but you can see Spiderman is crouching), kids eating cake at the coffee table and AJ euphoric about cake and ice cream.

The Big 4!

AJ turned 4 on Friday. I took the afternoon off to celebrate with him and the two of us marked the occasion with lunch out and a trip to the local paint-your-own pottery place. I had plans to take him to a local restaurant with a casual outdoor patio and had visions of us sipping lemonade and ordering a very grown-up lunch. As we were driving to said grown-up restaurant, we passed the local Dairy Queen and AJ piped up with "I want to go to the ICE CREAM PLACE for my birthday lunch!" One quick u-turn later and he was in heaven. We ordered a hot dog for him, a cheeseburger for me and pink lemonade for both and sat outside on a bench watching the traffic go by while we ate. I want to always remember that lunch in my mind, me and my big four year old guy sitting together on the bench eating and talking. After he finished his hot dog, he was excited to have a chocolate cone with sprinkles.

From there we headed to the local paint-your-own pottery shop called If An Elephant Could Paint. I should have thought with my four year-old mind about this in advance, because when we arrived AJ was disappointed to realize he was not there to see an actual elephant painting something. "Where is the painting elephant?!?" he asked as he peeked around the corner into the back room. He recovered from his disappointment as soon as he saw the Spiderman sample plate on the wall and quickly decided his project would be the same. I didn't realize that paint your own pottery takes three coats of paint and that you have to let it dry between each coat. AJ was excited for the first coat and willing to do the second. By the third he was bored and had to be coaxed to finish with promises of how cool Spiderman would look hanging on his wall when he was done. I was impressed that he was able to hang in there for the better part of an hour focused on one task. When we were paying at the end, he asked me how old he had to be before he could get a credit card of his own--look out, Joe! I told him 18 and he was shocked to hear that he had another 14 years to go to get to that milestone. "That will take forever," he sighed. And I thought in my head that if it went by as quickly as his first four years have gone, it will be here before I know it.

Christmas in June

I know, it is truly terrible that it is June and I am just now getting around to doing posts from Christmas. June, for heaven's sake! But I don't want to lose these memories, and we will put on our positive thinking to note that these pictures are a nice counterpoint to the very hot and humid weather we have had here lately.

This was a very special Christmas for me because all of our family was together. My dad and Susan came first for an early Christmas celebration, and then my mom and brother came later in the week and Joe's family was here as well. As an adult I realize how hard it is to coordinate everyone's schedules and savor the holidays when we do get together. One of my favorite things about my dad's visit was having the cousins all dressed in their matching Christmas jammies while Pops read to them from "Twas the Night Before Christmas." We weren't able to get a decent picture of the cousins together and the reading didn't last more than a minute before the kids wandered off to play with new toys, but it was a start to build future holiday moments.

My favorite part about Christmas dinner (outside of the company, of course!) was the addition of Christmas crackers. This is an old English tradition where a paper crown, a toy and a joke are rolled into a paper "cracker" that is popped open just before dinner. Everyone has to wear their silly crown and tell the group his/her joke. It was a fun way to get the conversation flowing.

Three Generation Tea

As we get excited for our next visit with my sister and her husband, Brett, and my nieces Violet and Zoe, I was looking back at old posts and realized that I never did my posts on our last visit. So here it is...a recap of Christmas. In June!

We had an awesome visit with Nicki and her family in December. They are currently living in Santiago, Chile and teaching at an international school there, so we felt very fortunate to get them at our house for more than a week in December because their travel time is limited. It had been about five years since I last spent a week with my sis, so this was really an awesome treat.

Nicki and Brett are way more ambitious and adventurous than we typically are about outings and travel, so I feel like we saw and did more in 8 days with them than we usually do in about six months. Some of my favorites included a trip to the Lincoln Park Zoo to see the Holiday Zoo Lights and a three-generation ladies tea at the local tea shop with my mom, Nicki and the girls, Violet and Julia. But the best part was just all of the hanging out and catching up over many meals. Here are some pictures of my sister and Violet trying tea and my mom with Julia.

Thinking Really Hard

The other night AJ asked me "Mama, do you have to think really hard to have a bubble come out of your head?" It took me a minute to figure out what he meant, but he has been obsessed with superheros lately and Spiderman in particular and has been looking at books with the comic strip thought bubbles. And apparently AJ had concluded that those thought bubbles might appear above his head if he just thought hard enough. Not sure what that says about how hard he thinks I have been thinking for the past four years since he has never seen a thought bubble floating above my head. We'll chalk that up to my sleep deprivation.