Serial-- you guys-- it lives up to the hype

You guys, the amount of work I got done at work today is truly remarkable.  Also, I think it's why I am so fat.  All the sitting in my chair day in and day out doing tedious things.  GOOD THING I DON'T GO TO THE OFFICE EVERYDAY.  But really, the amount of work I got done is only remarkable because I wanted to be listening to Serial so badly every second of the day.  I only started listening yesterday morning on the elliptical, and before you know it between exercising and driving 15 miles an hour to and from work on the snow and ice and walking to the parking garage with my head down against the wind and shopping at Whole Foods and the conventional store with throngs of others, I have gone through 6/9 episodes.  IT'S SO GOOD.  I am addicted to a good mystery, and this one's the best.  I can't even write about it because I need to go hear it right now.  At hockey practice.  Freezing and trying to look super engaged but my earbuds give me away.

You should really go listen to it.

Monday randoms

So, like I said, my parents were in town to watch the babies so we could have a blissful time in Chicago.  We came home from our trip, and a babysitter came over like 2 hours later (this went over HUGE with the babies, as you might imagine).  We went out to dinner at a cute bar downtown and then saw Wanda Sykes.  We had amazing seats-- 5th row-- close enough to be heckled even-- but we weren't heckled.  I fell asleep mid show, actually-- I was SO TIRED from the weekend.  And my beer wore off.  Moments after my dad took the above picture, a security guard came by and threatened to take away our phones.  So. No more pictures of the evening.


Oh!  I got my first Stitch Fix fi!  Like an idiot, I only took a picture of the box, not the clothes.  Duh.  Next month, I will do better.  I only kept 2/5 things-- a really awesome chunky white cardigan and a super cute striped gray t-shirt that will be perfect for capturing that polished mom vibe I can never quite capture.  I would never pick up either of these things in a store, so I was happy to suddenly find them on my bed.  I sent back some dumpy wine-colored Mavi cords (if I am going to spend a hundred bucks or so on pants, they need to be cuter than that), a weird cowl neck black sweater with these inexplicable front pockets that gave me a FUPA, and a really meh houndstooth blouse that I almost kept because it looked good with the cardi.  But then I found a cuter shirt at Nordstrom Rack and sent the meh one packing.  You can tell the company how much you want to spend (I try to keep it at around $300 for the whole box) and what you like to wear.  You give them all your sizes, and you can link to Pinterest boards that help explain the looks you are going for.  Next month, I asked for trendy jeans and cute tops that can go from mom- to work- to date night (does this even exist?) and a statement necklace.  You can also leave really detailed feedback on each shipment to help refine their searches, and you can schedule your box to come as frequently as you'd like.  Every mom in my hood uses this service.  I was at wine club two months ago, and every single person I complimented told me they got whatever item I liked through Stitch Fix. I went home and signed up that night!  It took awhile for my first fix to come, but now I am all set for every 4 weeks.

 We bought Dorothy a pair of light-up Elsa high heels at the Disney store on Michigan Avenue (so many great stores, and we were at freaking Disney.  SO SAD), and she loves them.  She looks like a little suburban mom herself in this get-up

 Cooper is dying laughing because seconds before I took THIS picture, Dorothy fed Beatrix a spoonful of cereal.

 I did something that most people do all the time: I took my kid with me to the library.  I aways try to go on my own time, but I have been using that time to do work because OH MY GOD FINALS ARE COMING SOON, so I had to bring a toddler.

 She liked the grubby toys and acres of books to unshelf.

 And she was thrilled to find blocks to stack.  Stacking is her favorite.

 Well.  Stacking and dumping.  She made herself right at home.

Conference weekend: the unprofessional parts

Here is Dorothy sleeping on the couch the day we left all 4 kids with my parents and went by ourselves to Chicago for 2 whole nights. It was totally amazing. 

Unfortunately, the picture below is our shitty view from one of our 7th floor hotel room windows. The other window had a sort of lake view which was worse in a way because it made us feel bad about the room we could have had on the 23rd floor. But we didn't have that room because I lost my shit on the exec level elevator crammed with convention goers using it to go to the fucking 5th floor. So we asked for a room we could walk to and spent the whole weekend going up 7 floors by the service stairs. 

Thursday night we went out with our friend Dawn which made us feel about12 years younger because we all used to hang out together in Oxford Ohio. 

I also got to seey fabulous friend Amy who took her general fabulousness to a new level in a full-length mink. So jealous.   Also, she's the funnest. 

OMG American Girl!! I have been getting emails telling me to hurry up and get the girl of the year before she's gone, so I did. But maybe there was not really a rush given the inventory. Oops. 

We were totally tourists. 

And only bought for the kids. Sigh. 

Dinner last night was so much fun. 

And then I found myself eating second dinner at a dive bar at 1:30. Oops?

My high school speech coach!!

Then this morning I put my mom pants back on. Literally. 

Look at all the kid crap. 

Breakfast with Ben's grandma and it's back to the grind. 

Third grade is real life

It's a sure sign we need to wash Harry's hockey gear when he wears it and the dog cannot stop licking him.

It sometimes freaks me out that he is in third grade.  I mean, you guys, I remember third grade.

I don't remember much about school before that year, only a couple of snap shots.  I remember how it felt to read I See Sam books in kindergarten-- the first word I figured out totally on my own was mouse, and then I could get house, and the whole world just opened right up right there at my desk.  I remember playing around the world with math facts in first grade and distinctly enjoying how it self to kick someone's ass in a competition.  I remember reading Dear Mr. Henshaw out loud to the fourth graders when I was in first grade, too-- I really liked reading to them, but I think they thought I was weird.  In second grade, I read Are You There God, It's Me, Margaret, and I was so engrossed in the book that I did not know the whole class had left the room to go to music.  Oops.

But third grade-- I remember it all.  Mrs. Piper had us keep a tiny notebook with a new vocabulary word everyday, and she would give each kid one M&M when she introduced the new word.  We had to come up with a sentence that used the words, and we would write that sentence in our notebooks.  I wrote "The rock is unique," and she told me you couldn't really call a rock unique, and to this day, I think WTF, lady?  We learned how to write in cursive, and I could NOT figure out how to make a cursive "r."  We were practicing at our desks, and I remember thinking oh god please don;t let her pick me to write the letter on the board, and she did!  She did pick me, and I was super embarrassed because my "r" totally sucked.  I wrote my first report in that class, on orangutans, researched using my family's living-room set of World Book  encyclopedias and illustrated with my Crayola markers.  For my gifted and talented class, I wrote a paper comparing West Side Story to Romeo and Juliet, and I made a killer diorama with a Ken and a gawky off-brand Barbie to represent a scene from Mr. Popper's Penguins.  In Mrs. Piper's class, we played board games during indoor recess, and we memorized Shel Silverstein poetry to recite to the class-- I still know a few by heart 28 years later.  I read 2 books-of-a-lifetime during silent reading time:  Roll of Thunder Hear my Cry and Where the Red Fern Grows, and my best friend from third grade was my matron of honor.

Third grade was real, and I wonder what he is going to remember.

Toddlers, man

I think Cooper has transitioned to preschooler from toddler since, you know, he goes to preschool and generally pees in the potty and walks places on his own about 99% of the time and can reliably do small tasks like go find his mittens and throw away his own gum wrappers.  I mean, he chews gum.

Luckily, though, Dorothy is still a toddler.  She has been a toddler since she was 10 months old and started toddling. I am glad, too, because I LOVE toddlers.  I love how dignified they are with their eating like people and wearing clothes like people and trying to do things for themselves like people.  But I also love how totally and completely incompetent they are at doing all of those things.

Dorothy is particularly lovable because she is so serious and grumpy.  She said no to everything instinctively and then she crosses her little arms and takes time to consider.  Then, and only then, do we sometimes get a yesh or a whole-body nod.  Except stuff she's not supposed to be doing-- she loves doing that and if you ask her if she wants to do it, she will always say yes.  She was really clingy and didn't want me to put her down the other day before I went to work, but I had to go get dressed.  I didn't want her to scream for Ben, so I tried to engage her in an activity.  Did she want to sit at the table and color?  No, huh-uh.  Did she want to sit on the couch and watch Curious George?  No, huh-uh./  Did she want to thrown a ball for the dog?  No, huh-uh.  Did she want to go in Cooper's room and dump out his sock drawer and then pull the drawer out, turn it upside down, and jump off of it?  Yesh. Yesh she did, and she stomped right off to do it.

Here are some of my favorite recent shots of her toddlerness in all its mulleted glory.
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Chrismukkah card outtakes

Here are the pictures that did NOT make it into our card this year:

I mean, I would not want to spoil the surprise of our ACTUAL pictures because I know you rip open our envelope as soon as you find it in your mailbox in breathless anticipation.  You with anticipation, not our envelope or mailbox.  Modifiers.  Not always i the right places.

I used a new vendor this year, seduced by a sale and glowing write-ups making the round of the perfect mom mom-blogs I read, but I got an email telling me I should carefully review my purchase and then NO LINK TO A PROOF.  So now I am really worried that it is a typo'd misspelled mess.  Falalalala.

Dinner Chaos