VDay!

Happy Valentines Day!

I love Valentines Day-- I think it is the candy and the lovely bright colors. We all wore red and pink or hearts.  LAME.  The kids had a heart-shaped pizza, and Ben and I enjoyed delicious, spicy Thai takeout and way nicer than usual wine.  I even made from-scratch pancakes on a school day-- heart--shaped to boot.  Harry did tell me that if I were an artist, my pancakes would look even more like hearts.  Erm.

The boys also enjoyed the 100th day of school this week.  Second-graders dressed like hundred-year-old people

And kindergartners frequented the 100-Day store where each kid got 100 pennies to buy trinkets.  I worked the 14-cent table which was laborious.  It takes 5 year-olds a little while to count out 14 pennies.

Luckily Jack bought a whistle.

We had to leave when Cooper took up residence in the middle of the floor and loud pooped, but it was just in time for morning nap anyway.

Lunch:  a sensory experience.

Cooper got this sorting pie for Valentines Day and he LOVES it.  A really cool toy!

Today, we took the kids sledding after naptime.  Fun!

Dorothy tried spaghetti sauce.  She liked it.  Her face and her high chair tray will never be the same color again.

As you can see form the above videos, we cannot stop filming Dorothy, who is a tiny little full-time walker.  No more crawling. What the heck?  She'll be 1 in a month-- any ideas for a hilarious birthday party theme? She is sharing her big day with Ben's 35th...

Milestones today!

This morning, I backed out of the garage and cracked the hell out of the mirror on my brand new car.  Seriously, the damn thing has 812 miles on it and already needs a new drivers side mirror and has gotten a new back passenger-side tire.  Being my car is rough.

But I probably would have never mentioned it because life has been very blah and un-bloggy (read a lot of books, ran a lot of errands, attended meetings that were inconvenient because I had to keep driving 20 minutes home to feed the baby, sent a lot of email-- YOU KNOW, the usual).

Then, today, after lunch, after Cooper had been safely stashed away in his crib for nap and I was getting ready to feed Dorothy before heading out for office hours and class, THIS HAPPENED:



Walking all by her little ten-month-old self!  She has been toddling a couple steps at a time for a few days-- hence the giant bruise on her forehead (nasty collision with the downstairs coffee table) -- but today she learned how to stand up from sitting down without holding onto anything, and she was OFF.

Then, after we praised the hell out of the baby and Ben started to pick up teeny pieces of grilled cheese sandwich off the floor, we heard a familiar stompy sound and sure enough, Cooper appeared in the kitchen looking pretty pleased with himself.  "No nigh nigh," he informed us.  "But no me-me," he said emphatically.  He starts a lot of phrases with "but," and he has recently started calling me "mommy" and himself "me-me."  HE IS ADORABLE.

Ben and I tried not to laugh our faces off, and we (Ben) put him back in his crib.  While I was feeding Dorothy in her room, I heard some suspicious bumps coming from his room, and after I deposited her in her own crib, I opened Cooper's door a sliver to see him happily playing trains.

That's when I insisted that Ben and I rethink our plan to keep Cooper home with us another year and wait to start him in preschool until 2015 when Dorothy can start 2 year-old preschool.  When I imagined this cozy scenario, I imagined a NAPPING COOPER in a CRIB.

I enrolled him in preschool today, snagging the very last 2 year old spot at the school we wanted because this town is freaking insane about preschool and you really need to register by February 1.  WE GOT LUCKY.

So, after dinner, this happened:

Big kids, both of em.

Dorothy walks! (Only 5 or 6 steps on her own in a row but like crazy with a push-toy)

Enjoy these videos of Dorothy pushing stuff around:








Today, we enjoyed our annual VALENTINE CRAFT-A-PALOOZA which is a huge mess but just consists of the boys assembling little gift bags of crap from Target, signing Valentine cards also from Target and cutting out card stock hearts, punching holes in them, writing classmates' names on them and affixing them to plastic bags with ribbons from-- you guessed it-- Target.

 Dorothy is totally self-feeding, and I love the giant mess she makes.

 Harry's completely adorable Valentines.

 OMG-- The Lego Movie is fantastic!  Also, I love taking Cooper to the movies-- he is a huge fan too.  But he is too cool to sit by me-- he needed to be in his own row with his disgusting array of snacks.  he kept running up to me to give me a kiss mid-movie.  It was a 9:30 show this morning, and the theater was pretty empty.  Cooper is not a peak-time movie-goer just yet.

 Getting a virus at the grocery store today while Ben and Dorothy paid and Harry was down the street from our house at a cookie party.

 Watching Barbie Life in the Dreamhouse over pizza in front of the tube because the table was occupied with V-Day craft-a-palooza

 Jack's Valentines, even cuter because they are clutched in his dirty little 5-year-old boy hands.

Boys being boys.

The boys were making cards for my dad this morning, and I was cleaning up breakfast and only half listening.  Until I heard Jack say, "Now I drew Grandpa Gary's private parts, so now I'll draw on his pants," at which time I devoted my full attention to their endeavor.  Awesome.  He's the kid from Super Bad.  I never should have called him McLovin when he was a fetus.

Yesterday, Dorothy went down for a nap at 7:45 in the morning, which was unusual but pretty darn awesome since Cooper has a baby gym class that cuts her nap short.  But it meant that I could not watch the boys walk to school out her window like I usually do, so I had to put on my Ugg mocs and stand on the front porch.  They were bickering with each other as they walked down the driveway.  By the time they went through the first cross walk, they were hollering, and I tried to call out to tell them to stop fighting, but I didn't want to speak too loudly and wake the baby.  By the second crosswalk, they were slapping each other, and by the time they reached school, they were full-on brawling, fists flying, rolling on the ground in the snow.  I watched with horrified fascination for a few seconds but then I realized they could get suspended for fighting on school grounds, and then they would be stuck home with me.  So, I ran across the street as fast as I could in my jammies (yoga pants, a tank top and a cardigan thank goodness), dodging car after carpooling car to break them up and tell them there was no way in the world they would be getting anything even close to screen time when they got home.  Harry rolled his eyes at me (ROLLED HIS EYES AT ME) and walked into the school, while Jack stayed to argue and whine about his 2 left gloves, the start of the whole mess.  It was seriously classy.  Especially when I realized I left 2 babies alone in the house-- one in her crib and one in the living room watching Barbie: Life in the Dream House on his iPad.

Such a helper:

 Not pictured:  the mound of laundry on my bed, the top of my head

 Ransacking is her favorite.

I found these on my phone.  Coop's eye view:

Is this how he sees the world?  I think it might be. Today,  I was so charmed by the way he grocery shopped that I bought every low-lying item he threw in his little cart.  Especially because he was covered with juice from his breakfast cherries (he's not into face washing) and kind of looked like a teddy bear/vampire cross, which is a lot cuter than it sounds.

So many hats!

Today is a day when I realize how many different hats I wear. 

I spent the morning enjoying a workout, playing with Dorothy on The Little Gym's Big! Red! Mat! and pushing her lazily around Target as we bought Cooper's diapers and wipes, and Dorothy's and my hair notions.

 I finished The Goldfinch over lunch (LOVED it) and counted my daily calories (I have 935 to squander for dinner and snacks and wine). 

Then it was off to my office where I worked on a committee I am on that meets next week and did some PTO organizing for the boys' school. 

Next up was a 2.5 hour class where we discussed the 1848 Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions and Elizabeth Cady Stanton's 1892 Solitude of Self address. I furiously graded 20 discussion papers immediately after class ended. 

 Now, I am gearing up for a busy hour picking the babies up from the hockey rink and desparately cleaning the house before the babysitter arrives to spell Ben and me for a PTO meeting. We'll rush home from that to put everyone to bed and collapse exhausted on the couch with beer and leftover super bowl food. 

And then tomorrow, we'll run a slightly different-- but largely the same --gauntlet. Phew!

My dad is still in the ICU. Harry has another cardiologist appointment Friday. Keep those good thought coming. 

Hair notions in action:

Cooper was not to be outdone:

Waaaah. I am so tired.

Sweet baby bed hog.  She is a dangerous little co-sleeper these days because she doesn't want to stay snuggled up to me all night long. Instead, she moves everywhere all over the bed.  I am trying to get her to sleep all night in her room, but that makes me tired as a bucket of hair. Is a bucket of hair tired?

COSTCO on a SATURDAY.  Gah.  Cooper stole Dorothy's hat.

SNACKS!  The best part of Costco besides samples and a $9 pallet of organic sugar.

Dorothy ate a grilled cheese sandwich and LOVED it.

Grocery store receipts= best toys ever.  BPA for all!

SO TIRED you guys.

January: What I Read

I optimistically thought I would finish this horrifying self-help fear-of-flying book I was reading.  It is HILARIOUSLY bad and keeps bringing up new things for me to fear, like planes colliding in midair, terrorists sneaking over fences and hiding in wheel wells with bombs, pilots falling asleep at the wheel, wings missing screws, and an awful, awful anecdote about people being sucked out a faulty door and free-falling 22,000 feet into the Pacific.

Anywho, here's what I did read:

12.  Moving Miss Peggy: A Story of Dementia, Courage, and Consolation by Robert Benson:  A very sweet and lovely memoir.
11.  Family Pictures by Jane Green:  Predictable and not very artful, but a quick and entertaining read.
10.  Close my Eyes by Sophie McKenzie:  A serviceable thriller.  Liked it.
9.  The Mothers by Jennifer Gilmore:  Very well written story of marriage and adoption-- a really moving and beautiful ending.
8.  Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris:  A classic.  Damn he's funny.
7.  Sisterland by Curtis Sittenfeld:  A rental find at the library-- this book was a great read and easy to finish on an 8-hour car ride.
6.  Salt, Sugar, Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us by Michel Moss:  Read this!  It's a great expose.  Moves beyond the argument that processed food is bad to really interrogate the insidious industry.
5.  Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy by Helen Fielding:  I loved this book even though it kind of sucked.  I missed Bridget, what can I say?
4.  The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion by Fannie Flagg:  I love this author.  I even cried a little at the end.
3.  Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl: SO GOOD!  READ IT!
2.  Labor Day by Joyce Maynard:  This was gorgeous and a quick read-- I cannot wait to see the move now (but first I will take all the boys to the Lego movie)
1.  Doctor Sleep by Stephen King:  Oh, this!  This was the Stephen King I used to love in 5th grade!

The top 3 were pretty much a tie-- really great reads!  And the Pessl totally reminded me of Donna Tartt, so imagine how happy I was to find The Goldfinch on the rental shelf at the library.  Best $2 I spent last week!