Choo Choo! Friday Adventure, Part 2.

This little boy thought the train was terrifying for the first 3 minutes, fascinating for the next 15, and then totally boring for the last 5 or so.

Did I mention I had a great day with my little man? And judging by the look on Steve's face when we met him and Caroline downtown, he had an equally awesome day with his little girl.

After a fun dinner, we headed to Steve's office where he had left his blackberry charger. Our children ran like lunatics up and down the halls of Daddy's (deserted for the weekend) building. It was like the most fun thing they had ever done. Makes me think he should take them to work EVERY day. Don't you think?

Heigh-ho, Heigh-ho, It's Off to Work She Goes!

Caroline went to "help" Daddy at work this morning. And if his usual work day includes a trip on the ferry to the Boston Harbor Islands to see a princess and pirate play, we've got some talking to do.

Here she is, hard at work:

William and I are having an awesome day at home. It's a gorgeous fall-is-in-the-air day: blue skies and cool temps. We started the morning with a long walk, met a bunch of friends at the park, and now I'm enjoying some quiet time while the little man is napping. As soon as he wakes up, we are going to catch a train to meet Caroline and Steve in the city for dinner. Not a bad way to start the weekend! I hope yours is off to an equally lovely beginning!

Caroline-isms

I started this post last Friday and am just now getting around to posting it. I guess we've been a bit busy!


Today Caroline informed me that "when I'm a grown up lady and have my own house, my rule is going to be POTTY TALK!" Ok, babe. I'll hold you to that one when you have a houseful of children someday. It's documented here. :)



She has also been spending endless amounts of time playing in her "coffin." This has me a little creeped out, especially since I have no idea how she even knows what a coffin is.



And William? Whenever I ask him any question he shakes his head, says "no," and runs away from me. Awesome.

Does This Happen At Your House?

Last night we had two families over for dinner (thanks for a great night, Gs and Ds!). So of course we spent part of our afternoon tidying up, and by the time our guests arrived, our house was looking pretty good. And because we spent most of our evening outside grilling, eating, and playing on the swing set, our house still looked tidy by the time our friends left.

So explain to me how nearly every room of our house already looks like this, less than 24 hours later:

Is this normal? Does this happen at your house? And if not, how do you stop it from happening? I feel like we've got (relatively) good organizational systems and we definitely encourage the kids to play with one thing at a time and put things away before they move on to the next activity, but my kids can make my house look like a hurricane hit in less than half an hour. So please let me know if this is what your house looks like, too, or if I seriously need to work on tidying up with Caroline and William.

Dinner Tonight - At Home!

I've been craving lobster all week, and when I asked my friends to recommend a seafood restaurant, my good buddy Sheila told me that our local grocery store will steam them up and you can bring them home for dinner! Sounded good to me, so we decided to give it a try. It worked out perfectly because the kids had pizza at a birthday party earlier in the evening and I had a 6:00 hair appointment - I ordered my lobsters (and crab legs, too - we decided to go all out :) ) to be ready at 6:45, and I arrived home to a quiet, babies-down-for-the-night house by 7:00 with a large bag or steaming seafood! Steve and I just finished our feast. It was so much fun. And very, very yummy. And we had date night out last night, so it's been a pretty great week around here. :) I loved our fun nights, babe - so glad you are home this week!

Side Kick

I know this isn't the best picture I've ever taken, but I needed something to post, and since I haven't picked up my camera much lately, this is the best I've got. I think William looks sort of possesed, but the mosquitoes were chewing us up and we had to get inside, so the photo shoot ended. Trust me, he's much more adorable in person. :)

Caroline is at a morning day camp all week, so the little man and I have been having a blast spending quality time together. We've been to Target, the sporting goods store, the pharmacy, the toy store, the dry cleaner, the farmer's market, etc., and today we - gasp - ran out of errands. This is sort of hard to believe, especially since errands have been the bane of my existence for the past year or so. See, with two small children and William's twice-a-day nap schedule, finding any time to run errands was really difficult. What time we did have when nobody needed to be sleeping or eating was much better spent doing something fun or hanging out with our friends. So we never did. Run errands, I mean. Well, this week, with only one child (who is now down to one nap, btw) and many of our closest buddies out of town, I took advantage of alllllll that free time and did errands and had lots of one-on-one time with William. And it has me very excited for the fall. Caroline will be in school three mornings a week, which will give me lots of time alone with my main man. He's a great side kick, and I think we'll have a blast.

On the other hand, I am sorely missing my long, quiet mornings of yore when Caroline was at school and William napped peacefully upstairs. I keep finding myself putting things off for "when I have a quiet house" before I remember that I don't have that on a regular basis anymore. Things like blogging. I'm struggling to find time in my new schedule to keep up with the blog. I know that we will find a new normal, and that our new schedule is going to make all kinds of great things possible for us, but as a person who doesn't like change and craves routine, I'm floundering a bit. And all this is my (wordy) attempt to explain why I haven't been blogging much, and to ask you all to stick with me a bit until I find a new rhythm.

I'm sure my monkeys will do or say something hilarious/adorable/outrageous soon, and my blogging muse will be back. :)

Summer In Chicago '09

We had just 3 days between our trips to Chicago and the Poconos, so I didn't have time to edit and post pictures of our wonderful trip home - I'm finally just getting to it now. We had an absolutely wonderful visit with our family and friends. Here are some of the highlights from this year's visit:

An Oker/Shimer/Clark family BBQ:

My sister's family:

A morning visit to the park (with doughnuts, of course):

The splash park:

The Arboretum:

Kiddieland:

A photo shoot with P-lope:

Happy

Happy to be home.
Happy to finally have some summer weather here in Boston.
Happy to be back with our friends - at the splash park this morning!

We're Back. Again.

And oh-so-happy to be home. We've just spent an amazing week on a lake with our dear friends the Cobbs and the Shertzers. I'll let my two talented friends share their sure-to-be amazing pictures from our vacation, but in the meantime, here's one of the few shots I took. And I love it. :)