Check It Out

Because she says it so well. My Kid Is Better Than Your Kid.

Napping In Brooklyn

So we got to Brooklyn and I went to put Leni down for a nap and Ash became very insistent that she sleep in his room instead of in the pack n play in ours. I said OK, as long as he could create a safe napping environment for her. And this is what he came up with.

Yo Gabba Gabba

That lump on my chest? Leni. Strapped in to the sling snuggly as can be while mom and Ash rocked out to Yo Gabba Gabba at the original sight for the Woodstock festival in the 60's in Bethel, NY. Mommy gets a gold star for braving the Yo Gabba crowd solo with 2 month old and uber-hyper 3 year old in tow, though a t-shirt that says "I nursed my kid at Yo Gabba Gabba and only 3 people saw my boobies" would do too...

TGIF

Just Doing It

I'm a "no going back" type. Things I do are usually last minute decisions that have been playing out in slo-mo in my mind for YEARS and then are carried out instantaneously at the drop of a hat. Where to go to University, to live in S. America for a year, to apply for Teach for America and relocate to NY the day after our Montana wedding. And more recent events such as buying a home upstate while maintaining an apartment in the city, stopping the bottle for Ash, moving him from his crib to his toddler bed to his brand new big boy room and bed... all things that I blinked and decided to just do.
FYI: The ways we chose to grow our family were most certainly NOT one of those things. Just, you know, to clear up a couple possible wonderings...

Anyhow.

Tonight we're moving Leni to her crib. In her room. That means she's there right now, as I type, and daddy is currently disassembling the pack n play she's been sleeping in for the past month or so (after she upgraded from the bassinet where she spent her first 3-4 weeks) so that I do not have the option to move her back in to a crib in our room. Well, there's always the option to bring her in to bed with me (which is likely to happen...) but that will always be there no matter what. So, as she lies there all by herself in her very own crib in her very own room with her only company being Baby Tad and the Hitachi Magic Wand, I wonder where the freaking hell the last 2 months have gone. Honestly.

So. We're just doing it.

Why?

Because.

Monday.

Monday, I go back to work. And Monday I need to not be popping up every 45 minutes in the middle of the night to make sure the snort I heard wasn't her esophagus spontaneously combusting. I need to know that when we all awake to perform "the routine" bright and early Monday that we'll all be as rested as humanly possible. Now, I'm not that nuts. I get what "humanly possible" means in my situation, trust me. Which is why it's even more important to optimize the "possible" part of the phrase.

So. As I listen to her non-combustible snort over the baby monitor and watch Ash absolutely glue his eyes to the baby monitor screen so that he can proclaim "THERE'S BABY HELENA IS SHE OK???" every 30 seconds I ask only this:

May the bright eyes of the Gods, Karma, and Leonardo DiCaprio bless us with a calm and blissful transition this night. And may no esophagus be discovered combusted.

Purple Love

We gave it our best shot, but there's just no beating the gravitational pull that keeps yanking us back to Purple Pride and another season as MN Vikings fans. We're definitely New Yorkers but switching our loyalties from the Vikings to Giants just never felt quite right. So here we are, as purple as it gets.

So, Leni made it through airport security and landed in MN for her first of what are sure to be many MN world tours. Ash tried to give her all of his priceless pointers during the flight, like always ask the ones named grandma and papa for treats and remember to stay on the quiet side after 8PM so mom and dad will just forget that it's your bedtime and you'll get to stay up till all hours playing with your cousins. She didn't seem too terribly receptive to his gems of wisdom but I'm sure that will change quickly in the years to come. Ash pretty much has MN wrapped around his finger at this point...

No matter how many treks we make to MN it never ceases to amaze me how genuinely wonderful it is to have family in the room next door or right across the street or on their way over for a coffee and a quick visit. New York may be our home but we sure are suckers for the purple love.

Wordless Wednesday

Just Picture It

Saturday morning. Baby Child just fed (aka, snoozing soundly) and Toddler Child sweetly engrossed in a Care Bears movie on daddy's lap. Mommy sneakily wraps her legs around the corner and tip-toes up the stairs to the bathroom. The room where the bathtub is. The bathtub, as in the thing mommy was prohibited from using during during the pregnancy and then prohibited from using again until after the incision from the cesarean healed (another 6 weeks). There's just enough hot water left in the hot water heater after the morning laundry load filled with "we're parents of a newborn" and "we're parents of a newly potty trained toddler" puked/pee'd on items (sometimes both) to fill the tub with the most scrumptious hot bubbly water. Oh, and it doesn't end there. That bathroom I mentioned earlier? The one with the bathtub? IT IS THE ONLY ROOM IN THE HOUSE WITH A LOCK. Me and a few of the most recent editions of NY Mag, well, we enjoyed some much needed alone time. The only thing that could have possibly enhanced the experience would have been Leo DiCaprio appearing in the window for the soul purpose of dropping off a perfectly iced margarita on the rocks no salt...

And then just picture it again

Saturday night. Toddler Child has brushed his teeth, gone potty, read stories, sung songs, gone potty again, and is now singing himself to sleep with Plain White T's tunes (see post below). Baby Child on the other hand is clearly resisting all efforts for a pre-11PM snooze time. Sure it's been nice that our now nearly 8 week old daughter has delivered at least one 6-hour nightly block of sleep during actual nighttime hours since she was 4-5 weeks old, but we're going for gold here folks. We want to control when that 6-hour block happens, and if at all possible extend it to 7 or 8 or 9 or... So, have you seen the episode of Sex and the City where Samantha babysits for Miranda and the vibrating chair runs out of batteries so Samantha replaces them with her Hitachi Magic Wand?

Bottom line = IT WORKS. Sure, go ahead and judge. But Baby's got a new crib toy and mommy and daddy seem to have been green lighted for a 9:30PM bedtime. Score.

Sometimes just picturing it looks better to some than others. In this case, anyone out there currently parenting both a toddler and an infant is currently hating us. A Lot. Well, that or they just installed a lock on their bathroom (the one with the bathtub) door and are searching for the nearest Hitachi product retail shop to their home and are headed there. Right. Now.

As Easy As One Two, One Two Three Four

Ash's version of the Plain White T's song "1234"

And the original version, as sung by the Plain White T's

Wordless Wednesday

You Put The Lime In The...

A few nights ago we got to meet Ash's BFF's new little sister. Her due date was about a week and a half before Leni's but, well, you know the story. So, while we were reveling in some adult conversation over our first margaritas in oh, about 9 months, the 3 year old boys could be faintly heard giggling in the room down the hall while they occupied themselves trashing O's room playing peacefully and the newbie girls hung out in their respective vibrating and/or oscillating contraptions. The kind that go through 17 of the rarest sized batteries on Earth every week but you'll happily hunt down and pay for because you secretly wish you had your own vibrating oscillating contraption and can't fathom the thought of depriving your infant of one as long as it's still legal and hasn't yet become a denied right for infants under the Defense of Marriage Act...

Anyhow.

So we're sitting there and it suddenly occurs to each of us at nearly the exact same moment that our children are the the freaking bomb. OK, maybe we'd had this thought to ourselves before but at this particular moment is was just so ridiculously BLINKING IN NEON LIGHTS kind of clear. So naturally the conversation moved to cloning.

The result?

We narrowed down all potential causes for such uncanny fortune (via the most scientific of methods, of course) to...

Disney and Bud Light Lime.

Why?

Because that's where and what we were all doing in the weeks leading up to celestial alignment that delivered us two of the chillest baby girls ever.

And then the weekend continued and we celebrated Christmas in August (complete with a gift for each and an evening of The Grinch and several rousing rounds of Hungry Hungry Hippo), a Sunday stocked with farm visits and berry picking, and well...

I'll be toasting The Universe tonight with a Bud Light Lime.

Sunday Styles

The Babysitters

Fav Foto Friday

Wordless Wednesday

Welcome August

July (forever to be known as the 31 sleepless days when daddy had more traveling projects than ever and mommy morphed into Agent MMM: Maniacal Milk-producing Machine) is out and August has happily rolled its way in. Nearly 6 weeks down as a family of 4 and I'm proud to report we're all still breathing, albeit a bit quicker than before at times. Like the time I realized I had 5 minutes to get Ash to school and Leni had just filled her diaper (and jammies) and I hadn't brushed my teeth and Ash got both legs stuck in one hole in his underpants and the cat had just escaped. Ash was only 1 minute late to school that day. And the time daddy was on his FINAL flight of a 5-week travel spree for work and had to be deplaned then re-planed 5 or 6 times before the flight was canceled then rebooked on the next flight (that was leaving from the complete opposite side of the airport in 16 minutes), meanwhile the kids and I anxiously prepped for his return home by trying to simultaneously bathe the 3 year old and feed the 5 week old and try to identify which of the 3 piles of laundry are A) puked on B) spilled on C) clean, because everything fits in to 1 of those 3.

And then he was really really home and I really really popped the champagne and we proceeded to hang out together, all 4 of us, for an entire weekend. And daddy didn't even have to be at an airport at 6AM Monday morning! We may even venture to wing night at the village pub tonight in celebration! I wonder what super spicy buffalo chicken does to the flavor of breast milk.

Buh-bye July and Hellooooo August!

Kid stats:
Ash made the move to big boy underpants a little over a week ago and we've enjoyed being (nearly) accident free ever since. His cereal of choice for potty battleship is Kix. He's a puzzle-putting-together machine. Seriously, give him a puzzle listed for age 5+ and he'll have it put together faster than I can place our dinner order for sushi delivery.
Leni continues to grow like a weed. She's gone from 4lbs 13oz to 7lbs 6oz in just less than 6 weeks. She giggles in her sleep and has started to grab objects in front of her. She'll be carefully selecting which of Ash's puzzle pieces to slobber over in no time.

And us?
Last night Ash kissed Mommy and Leni goodnight and brought Daddy upstairs for stories. Mommy and Leni listened through the window while swinging in the hammock on the porch. Then Mommy and Daddy enjoyed a Beer and some animal crackers while watching the Discovery Channel's Shark Week episode #1.

August = So far, so good.