As of yesterday, Brendan no longer calls bananas band-aids.
Liam putting Brendan's sandals on Brendan is the cutest and funniest thing ever.
Fatherhood has really changed Eric. He actually said, "I think black is too dark for a baby's room," in response to me asking him about some curtains.
I have officially made it to the time when I will be in the new maternity wing of my hospital. Eric and I took a tour tonight and it is pretty damn cool.
I have one presentation and one huge paper left for the semester. Also I start a new movie discussion at the library next Monday and run a book discussion on the 17th, but after that my calendar's free.
Zoey and Lucky are suuuuper lovey dovey these days.
I don't know if it's because it's my 3rd pregnancy or what but my weight gain this pregnancy is just crazy (though the doctors don't think so because they don't realize I came in 13 pounds above my normal weight to start with) so I'd really like the baby to decide to be born sooner rather than later just so I can stop going in for checkups and seeing ow much more weight I've gained.
Eric found Brendan in the naughty corner today while I was at the doctor, and it turned out Liam had sent him there. Brendan said it was because he threw a car but Liam said it was because Brendan licked him. Liam puts up with a lot from Brendan but I'm happy he still is in charge when all is said and done.
Eric and I have to decide if we want a swingset from the house my sister is buying. It's not the one I want (which costs $1,000 so we wouldn't be getting anyway) and it's sort of cool but also needs new paint and stuff. We also have to decide if it would take up too much space in the backyard. And I think we have to decide by tomorrow. Hmm.
I have to go to bed much earlier than I used to. Not that I actually go to bed when I have to though, and I can't explain why not. I'm not lying when I say I'm actually looking forward to going to the hospital to have this baby just so I can hopefully get some rest while I'm drugged up. This time I think I will actually send the bay to the nursery sometimes.
We got to swim lessons a little late on Sunday but I am so happy I didn't have a water birth in front of all the toddlers and I also can't believe that soon Liam will go to swim lessons on his own, and not with me or Eric holding him. As many millions of times that you've heard it said, kids really do grow up very fast. I do not like this.
Tonight when we got home from the hospital tour Liam and Brendan and their babysitter gave me my very first flower bouquet from my kids, which they had gone around the neighborhood to create. There were some tulips in it, but they came from the garden of a lady who cut them for them when she heard about their plan, so it was ok. It's actually beautiful and I'll have to post a picture of it. They also gave me the first mother's day card I ever got from my kids. Is that not the coolest thing or what?!
Monday, May 3, 2010
Monday, April 26, 2010
Things I Never Foresaw Myself Saying (Before I Became a Mom)
Can you pick up this elephant?
Go tell your brother you are sorry for hitting him in the face with your light saber.
No, I've never had a penis.
No more broccoli until you eat your pizza.
Why is your alligator still in the kitchen?
Sure we can drive by and see the thumb.
Be very careful not to break Jesus.
Did you know it's not nice to ask someone why they got so fat?
Yes, Barack Obama and George Washington can use the potty.
Go tell your brother you are sorry for hitting him in the face with your light saber.
No, I've never had a penis.
No more broccoli until you eat your pizza.
Why is your alligator still in the kitchen?
Sure we can drive by and see the thumb.
Be very careful not to break Jesus.
Did you know it's not nice to ask someone why they got so fat?
Yes, Barack Obama and George Washington can use the potty.
Monday, April 19, 2010
Fantastic Fratboy Toddlers
On Saturday night we were in the city (unfortunately for The Double R going away bash, which was very fun but sad at the same time.) On our way home we stopped at Starbucks, and while Eric and Liam ran in, Brendan and I waited in the car across the street.
"Look Mom, that's Starbucks," Brendan said pointing at the building outside his window.
"Oh, that's actually a bar. Starbucks is across the street."
A moment passes, then Brendan says, "Mom, I want to go to a bar sometimes."
"Ok, well you have to be older to go to bars, like 21, because that's the age when you can drink beer."
"Mom, Kelly can drink beer."
"Yes, she can because she is 21."
"But Kyle can't drink beer."
"No, he can't, Brendan, because he's not 21 yet."
A few minutes pass. "Mom?"
"Yes Brendan?"
"Mom, I want to drink beer sometimes. I like beer."
This, combined with the fact that Liam calls orange juice wine stein, should definitely make me the favorite mom among the preschool parents.
I absolutely love this awesome weather and I want every year in Chicago to go straight from winter to summer. On Friday night we went to the pool where Liam and Brendan take swim lessons on Sunday mornings, but we went to the toddler pool instead of the lap pool and in case you were wondering the water is as refreshing as the lap pool. I love it. Of course once we have 3.0 it's going to be interesting as far as swim lessons are concerned. I guess it's time for Liam to swim on his own. He's close, but not there yet.
Liam went to his first Cubs game on Sun with Eric and his brothers and his dad and I don't know what happened but Liam fell asleep on the way home a couple blocks from our house, just before 6pm, and he slept all the way until this morning at 7:30. Brendan also slept like a champ, and if I didn't have this frickin insomnia and Zoey didn't groom in my ear louder than a jet engine at 5am I could have had some mad sleep.
Lastly, tonight Brendan climbed up on Eric's work chair, got his computer and mouse, put on his "meeting" (Eric's headset), proceeded to pound his fist on the desk, make an angry face and say, "dammit! dammit!" Well, 2 years old and he's finally ready to work in the corporate world. I hear those guys love beer.
"Look Mom, that's Starbucks," Brendan said pointing at the building outside his window.
"Oh, that's actually a bar. Starbucks is across the street."
A moment passes, then Brendan says, "Mom, I want to go to a bar sometimes."
"Ok, well you have to be older to go to bars, like 21, because that's the age when you can drink beer."
"Mom, Kelly can drink beer."
"Yes, she can because she is 21."
"But Kyle can't drink beer."
"No, he can't, Brendan, because he's not 21 yet."
A few minutes pass. "Mom?"
"Yes Brendan?"
"Mom, I want to drink beer sometimes. I like beer."
This, combined with the fact that Liam calls orange juice wine stein, should definitely make me the favorite mom among the preschool parents.
I absolutely love this awesome weather and I want every year in Chicago to go straight from winter to summer. On Friday night we went to the pool where Liam and Brendan take swim lessons on Sunday mornings, but we went to the toddler pool instead of the lap pool and in case you were wondering the water is as refreshing as the lap pool. I love it. Of course once we have 3.0 it's going to be interesting as far as swim lessons are concerned. I guess it's time for Liam to swim on his own. He's close, but not there yet.
Liam went to his first Cubs game on Sun with Eric and his brothers and his dad and I don't know what happened but Liam fell asleep on the way home a couple blocks from our house, just before 6pm, and he slept all the way until this morning at 7:30. Brendan also slept like a champ, and if I didn't have this frickin insomnia and Zoey didn't groom in my ear louder than a jet engine at 5am I could have had some mad sleep.
Lastly, tonight Brendan climbed up on Eric's work chair, got his computer and mouse, put on his "meeting" (Eric's headset), proceeded to pound his fist on the desk, make an angry face and say, "dammit! dammit!" Well, 2 years old and he's finally ready to work in the corporate world. I hear those guys love beer.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Eight Days a Week
Years ago I had this great idea for one way things could be better. Sort of like my great idea that everyone should live til they turn 100, and then peacefully die in their sleep after they go to bed that night. And you wouldn't get any lingering illness or problems beforehand. Anyway, this other idea is that everyone's life is documented from the moment they're born. Not weirdly like in The Truman Show (which still creeps me out to this day) but just you have this personal film inventory and if you want to know what you were doing or what you looked like on August 1, 1986, you just pull out the footage and there you go. I think some people have this thing called a memory, which actually stores a lot of that information in their own brain, but my memory doesn't really do that so I need DVDs.
Now that I have kids and have no skill at taking or archiving movies I wish someone was doing it for me . Every day there must be at least 27,115 hysterical, brilliant things these little guys do and there will be no record of it at all. And lots of it I wouldn't record anyway because it would seem "mundane," but it shouldn't be lost. Like when I brought Liam home from school today and he started to play with his cars and I said, "You should go wash your hands first" and he looked at me and said in total sincerity, "That's a good idea, Mom." It doesn't translate into a blog post, but if you could see the video. Alas. Between him and Brendan, Eric and I are just dying of laughter and most of the time there is no one there beside us to appreciate how funny they are. Even when there are other adults you know they're just focused on their own thing and probably don't even realize how incredibly awesome these kids are. :o) Like yesterday I was in the backyard with some neighbors and one of them has a 1 year old and she and Brendan were "playing" ball and Brendan was being so sweet and gentle and rolling the ball to her and I'm talking with the moms and then I hear Brendan tell her very earnestly and a little concerned, "No baby, you don't eat the ball. That's not for eating. It's a ball. It's for playing with." And that's my little baby there, instructing the youth from his wise two year old vantage point.
The absolute best is when Liam and Brendan are playing together and talking to each other and laughing and the stuff they say blows my mind. And then sometimes it devolves into Liam saying "No Brendan" in a growly voice, with his face pressed right up into Brendan's face, and then sometimes he sends Brendan to the naughty corner, or sometimes Brendan scratches him in the face and then we send Brendan to the naughty corner. And those parts I don't like, but I guess that is some part of having a sibling close to your own age. I don't know because I never had that. Just the other day I saw Liam had a new scratch on his face and I asked him what happened and he said he scratched himself accidentally. And Brendan was next to him, wide eyed, and I said "Are you sure Brendan didn't scratch you." And Liam tried to cover for him but then he admitted Brendan did it, and I asked Brendan and at first he shook his head no but then very very solemnly he shook his head yes. And it was the first time I ever saw them try and cover. Though often they will stand up for each other. But this was a new thing. I'm going to try and post some pictures here after I get home from work. Let's see if I do, why don't we.
Now that I have kids and have no skill at taking or archiving movies I wish someone was doing it for me . Every day there must be at least 27,115 hysterical, brilliant things these little guys do and there will be no record of it at all. And lots of it I wouldn't record anyway because it would seem "mundane," but it shouldn't be lost. Like when I brought Liam home from school today and he started to play with his cars and I said, "You should go wash your hands first" and he looked at me and said in total sincerity, "That's a good idea, Mom." It doesn't translate into a blog post, but if you could see the video. Alas. Between him and Brendan, Eric and I are just dying of laughter and most of the time there is no one there beside us to appreciate how funny they are. Even when there are other adults you know they're just focused on their own thing and probably don't even realize how incredibly awesome these kids are. :o) Like yesterday I was in the backyard with some neighbors and one of them has a 1 year old and she and Brendan were "playing" ball and Brendan was being so sweet and gentle and rolling the ball to her and I'm talking with the moms and then I hear Brendan tell her very earnestly and a little concerned, "No baby, you don't eat the ball. That's not for eating. It's a ball. It's for playing with." And that's my little baby there, instructing the youth from his wise two year old vantage point.
The absolute best is when Liam and Brendan are playing together and talking to each other and laughing and the stuff they say blows my mind. And then sometimes it devolves into Liam saying "No Brendan" in a growly voice, with his face pressed right up into Brendan's face, and then sometimes he sends Brendan to the naughty corner, or sometimes Brendan scratches him in the face and then we send Brendan to the naughty corner. And those parts I don't like, but I guess that is some part of having a sibling close to your own age. I don't know because I never had that. Just the other day I saw Liam had a new scratch on his face and I asked him what happened and he said he scratched himself accidentally. And Brendan was next to him, wide eyed, and I said "Are you sure Brendan didn't scratch you." And Liam tried to cover for him but then he admitted Brendan did it, and I asked Brendan and at first he shook his head no but then very very solemnly he shook his head yes. And it was the first time I ever saw them try and cover. Though often they will stand up for each other. But this was a new thing. I'm going to try and post some pictures here after I get home from work. Let's see if I do, why don't we.
Snapshots
Trying out their gardening gifts from the Easter Bunny on a sort of cold Easter morning...
Here's one of Brendan and my brother Danny. I think they look a lot alike...
Monday, March 1, 2010
The Magical Mystery Tour
I used to love winter, then I hated it, now I'm starting to like it again. Mostly because LT and BP like it, and there are fun things to do in winter that you can't do otherwise, and I actually dress properly for the temps and we take vacations to break up the monotony. A couple weeks ago we took an unexpected trip to San Francisco for "work related reasons" which I might expound upon in another post. But anyway it was fun and we spent two nights in Sunnyvale and two in San Fran. There are no sea lions in San Fran anymore, btw. They jumped ship and no one really knows why. We did get to go to one of our favorite restaurants, The Stinking Rose which is also in LA but not nearly as good there so only go to the one in San Fran. But be warned they do NOT have the awesome sparkling lemonade of yore. Sigh. Liam slept through that delicious dinner, which is a rarity for him these days, but just being a two hour time change really threw off both the kids.
That little change ended up being the worst part of the trip, because they were both sort of off the whole time and so there were more moments of fussiness and tantrums for all of us. Still, you just can't say too many bad things about being somewhere in February that feels like spring and requires only a light jacket. We went outside a LOT, which was fantastic, and while Eric was working on Friday I took the boys about an hour south to the Monterey Bay Aquarium It was fun and on the ocean and insanely expensive, and nice to see but it also made me appreciate the Shedd a little more, because the Shedd really compares to this renown place. We also went to the Muir Woods which required a drive across the Golden Gate bridge and that's always a little trippy.
When we lived in LA we didn't get up to San Fran too often, and now I wish we had gone more. I also can kind of vaguely see what people like about nature, though I still would not venture into it if it weren't for Eric and the kids. Oh, and really most profound of all was the realization that, yet again, we do not have enough frozen yogurt establishments in this great Chicagoland area and why not??? Why not? It's not because it's too cold, because we have plenty of ice cream and yucky frozen custard places, so what is the problem? Ok, enough about that. Oh and also Eric and I went to what had been our favorite coffee chain in LA and we still order drink kits from there but it made me realize that it wasn't all that I remembered it to be and many of the things I think I would like to go back and do again I just wouldn't because they're not the same at all when you have kids. For instance we couldn't sit at our favorite Westwood restaurant for 4 hours and eat shwarma and smoke hookahs and drink turkish coffee and relax. We just couldn't do it anymore. It wouldn't be the same and if we didn't have a babysitter with us it wouldn't even be remotely possible. And the thing is I don't even care and so I guess in some strange way I've gotten older. Again.
Something I learned by accident on this trip, and I don't know why I didn't know it before, but for the Tips for Traveling with Kids - when you go somewhere and the view isn't important, get a room on the first floor. The hotel where Eric's work had put us up assigned us a gigantic room on the first floor, which meant Liam and Brendan could run around and not bother people in the room below us, and it was awesome. In San Fran we had a higher level floor, which was great because they could watch all the goings on out the windows - definitely a must for big cities. But in Sunnyvale there's nothing to see so having the first floor was primo. For some reason the Marriott in San Fran upgraded us to a suite so for the 2nd two nights we also had a giant place and it was great so that the kids could have space. We're going to Champaign this week for my semester on campus visit, and I booked a suite there for the first time thinking I was a super genius, but now I know I have to also ask for a, you guessed it, first floor suite. Speaking of my oncampus visit I need to go and do some schoolwork now. Oh, and on a seemingly unrelated point if you ever have a child who doesn't sleep, definitely take a visit to a pediatric sleep doctor. It is one of the best things we have ever done in our lives. Great timing with a newborn on the way haha but I will take my 3 months of sleep anyway.
That little change ended up being the worst part of the trip, because they were both sort of off the whole time and so there were more moments of fussiness and tantrums for all of us. Still, you just can't say too many bad things about being somewhere in February that feels like spring and requires only a light jacket. We went outside a LOT, which was fantastic, and while Eric was working on Friday I took the boys about an hour south to the Monterey Bay Aquarium It was fun and on the ocean and insanely expensive, and nice to see but it also made me appreciate the Shedd a little more, because the Shedd really compares to this renown place. We also went to the Muir Woods which required a drive across the Golden Gate bridge and that's always a little trippy.
When we lived in LA we didn't get up to San Fran too often, and now I wish we had gone more. I also can kind of vaguely see what people like about nature, though I still would not venture into it if it weren't for Eric and the kids. Oh, and really most profound of all was the realization that, yet again, we do not have enough frozen yogurt establishments in this great Chicagoland area and why not??? Why not? It's not because it's too cold, because we have plenty of ice cream and yucky frozen custard places, so what is the problem? Ok, enough about that. Oh and also Eric and I went to what had been our favorite coffee chain in LA and we still order drink kits from there but it made me realize that it wasn't all that I remembered it to be and many of the things I think I would like to go back and do again I just wouldn't because they're not the same at all when you have kids. For instance we couldn't sit at our favorite Westwood restaurant for 4 hours and eat shwarma and smoke hookahs and drink turkish coffee and relax. We just couldn't do it anymore. It wouldn't be the same and if we didn't have a babysitter with us it wouldn't even be remotely possible. And the thing is I don't even care and so I guess in some strange way I've gotten older. Again.
Something I learned by accident on this trip, and I don't know why I didn't know it before, but for the Tips for Traveling with Kids - when you go somewhere and the view isn't important, get a room on the first floor. The hotel where Eric's work had put us up assigned us a gigantic room on the first floor, which meant Liam and Brendan could run around and not bother people in the room below us, and it was awesome. In San Fran we had a higher level floor, which was great because they could watch all the goings on out the windows - definitely a must for big cities. But in Sunnyvale there's nothing to see so having the first floor was primo. For some reason the Marriott in San Fran upgraded us to a suite so for the 2nd two nights we also had a giant place and it was great so that the kids could have space. We're going to Champaign this week for my semester on campus visit, and I booked a suite there for the first time thinking I was a super genius, but now I know I have to also ask for a, you guessed it, first floor suite. Speaking of my oncampus visit I need to go and do some schoolwork now. Oh, and on a seemingly unrelated point if you ever have a child who doesn't sleep, definitely take a visit to a pediatric sleep doctor. It is one of the best things we have ever done in our lives. Great timing with a newborn on the way haha but I will take my 3 months of sleep anyway.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Ah, I Can See Clearly Now
Liam and Brendan know who the president and vice president are, and who the first president was. At the beginning of the State of the Union Address a week or two ago, I was finishing up class and Eric was doing something and so Liam and Brendan were the first ones to watch the tv. Then Liam started to excitedly announce, "George Washington is saying Barack Obama is there!" So I went over to see what he was talking about, and sure enough I saw an older man who was announcing the president. So I told Liam, oh that's not George Washington and went on to explain how he lived a long time ago blah blah blah. But I thought we'd already covered this before. Anyway it's sort of come up a few other times and then after a while Liam seemed to accept that GW doesn't live nowadays, but he seemed to wrestle with it. Then this morning the source of his confusion became clear to me. He said, "You know what, Mom. When George Washington got into that helicopter and flew away, I think he flew up into heaven, and that's why he's not around anymore." Wha-? Oh! Oh I get it now! You are thinking of George Bush, from the inauguration! That's a different person than George Washington, though he was also our president. Just not our first president. And you're right, he still is alive now.
It's no use explaining, parents just don't understand.
It's no use explaining, parents just don't understand.
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