Being at Heather's

The next time you go on vacation with your kids, you shouldn't go home at the end. No, you should send your oldest kid to my mom's house, where he will use the bathroom all by himself and even learn to wipe his own butt. While your older child is at my mom's house, you and your husband and your baby should spend three nights and two days at my sister's house, where you will spend your mornings lounging on the furniture and drinking coffee, your afternoons rolling a ball back and forth with your baby, and your evenings drinking mojitos and watching movies. It will be wonderful. You will love it.

Back on Main Street

When Charlie got a job 4 weeks ago I had the nerve to complain, just once, that if he was going to be unemployed for 8 months, it would have been nice if some of those months had been summer months, so we could go to the pool together and teach Jett to swim, so we could take family bike trips and go to the beach. I just thought that if he was going to get laid off, the summer would be the best time for it to happen. But, you know, that wasn't really a request.

Well lucky us, we are going to have the summer of our lives. Yep, Charlie is once again looking for a job.

On a brighter note, Kai learned a new sign this week. Now he signs "water" whenever he wants some. He's so smart! Rambunctious Jett has been out of diapers and wearing underwear for two weeks now. I am THRILLED! Also, we finally fed Jett some peanut butter and discovered that he is NOT allergic to peanuts - bring on the PB&Js. In these ways, summer just got a whole lot easier. We'll see you at the beach.

Bigger and Bigger

Tonight during dinner, when Jett was jumping around the living room and most certainly not eating dinner, he stepped up on to the case of a power drill (yes, I said the case of a power drill) and proclaimed that every day he is getting bigger and bigger, taller and taller, and some day he will be tall like me. I told him that some day he will be taller than me. He said, "yeah," and then he walked in to the kitchen and slowly turned around in circles, looking at everything he would some day be able to reach.

Then he put each of his feet on a plastic plate (yes, yes, there were plates on the floor) and slid himself across the room until he crashed into a chair and fell over in hysterics. It's great to be three.

Laughing

It's All How You Look At It

When I took these pictures I was thinking so poetically.

I thought I would capture my three-year-old in repose.


I thought about how much he's grown.


Look at his lovely feet, I thought.

Tonight I look at these pictures and I think he better put on his pajamas or he is going straight to bed.

Cinders and Ashes! Jett is Three Years Old!

Jett! You are three! You are three! You are three!



Happy Birthday, Jett! You turned three weeks ago, I can't believe it. So much has happened in the last few weeks that I barely know where to begin or how to include it all. For now we'll concentrate on your birthday weekend. It was, appropriately, a very Jett-friendly weekend. You loved it.

really, you loved it.

What made it so Jett-friendly, you ask? Well, for starters, we spent your birthday at Grammy and Papa's AND Aunt Jenny, Uncle Brian, and Ellie were there. (Yes, their sweet dog Bella was there too, and you survived). The morning of your birthday we set out a scavenger hunt for you and Ellie. You followed pictures all around the house and outside of it too, and at the end of the hunt, you found the treasure - a bike! (Bonus: it was Megan and Owen's old trike, so you know it's cool)! You sat down on that tricycle and looked about a thousand years old. We took a long walk/ride that afternoon, and spent a long time at the park, which made me feel like a thousand years old, what with all of the sliding and climbing and swinging we did together.

cousins on parade

We spent your birthday dinner at a restaurant that Grammy and Papa picked out and it was perfect. The restaurant had video games and skee ball and a merry-go-round, and you had a Papa with a pocket full of quarters - what luck! We all ate pizza and you ate a cheese stick. You opened presents and blew noisemakers and wore your birthday hat and sat right next to me all through dinner and we all just felt like a million bucks, celebrating you, and handing you presents to open.

cousins on the merry-go-round

One of the most memorable parts of your birthday, for me, was the fact that ever since Kai's birthday (three weeks before yours), you've been asking me not to sing "Happy Birthday" to you. You didn't want anyone singing happy birthday to you on your birthday, so we didn't. We put candles in the pizza and you blew them out in (relative) silence, perfectly happy. After dinner we went out for ice cream, and then five hours later, or something like that, you finally fell asleep.

a birthday puzzle - one of your favorite activities

Oh, but the party was not over, it was only beginning. Because the next day you saw Thomas. Thomas. Thomas the Train! Grammy and Papa said you would like it and they were right. It was magical. The national train museum hosted Thomas and his gear. You were particularly mesmerized by the table of battery-powered trains running on a web of tracks. (Silly me, I thought it would be ok for you to pick up a train, and then put it down on any old random place elsewhere on the track - what a crash that caused)! You could have spent hours watching those trains, and I could have spent hours watching you watch them.



But we couldn't stay there forever, eventually we had to drag ourselves away to actually ride Thomas. Now the car we sat in was like any metra car you've ever been on, and you've been on a few. But we could see Thomas pulling us, and you had your ticket to hold, and Grammy and Papa were with us, and it really couldn't get any better than that. I watched you hold your ticket, and then so seriously hand it over to the train conductor, and I just held my breath for fear of interrupting your sweet solemnity. We looked out the window and laughed with Daddy and widened our eyes in wonder when we drove over a bridge and saw only water below us.

Kai was with us too!

It was a hot, thirsty day, and at the end of it you didn't want your picture taken with Thomas and you didn't want to leave the trains, and Daddy and I were preparing for a meltdown when we realized that we could take a school bus back to our car. A school bus! We rode in a school bus! What a save. It was a fabulous day.

on the bus

Happy Birthday, Jett. You're pretty fabulous yourself, and we love you.

The Only Thing Missing was the Umbrella Drink

I still have to blog about Jett's third birthday, but wow, it takes some planning to find time to find the camera, find the camera batteries, find the cord so I can upload the pictures, and then find time to sit at the computer and get it all done. So while my camera sits across the room and the cord is in another room, and batteries are who-knows-where, I'll write about what we did today.

Today was, to my surprise, awesome.

My friend and I had agreed to take our kids to the pool today. This friend of mine, she seems to do everything with ease. She arrives places on time - with her kids. She packs amazing, well-balanced lunches, she never seems to need 20 minutes to organize her stroller before she can put her kids back in it, and her kids are always happy. So when she suggested that we take the kids to the pool, I was a little intimidated. I wasn't intimidated of her, I was just in awe of how she mentioned a trip to the pool. She said it so casually. Like it wouldn't take her an entire week just to gather the energy to think about taking two kids to the pool. As if it wouldn't take her a day to pack the bags. As if watching two kids in a pool would be easy. I was exhausted just thinking about it. In fact, I even pushed it back a day so I could rest up first (thankfully I could blame it on the weather forecast, although the rain never came). When I finally admitted to myself that I needed to pack for the pool, it took me over thirty minutes - and I did this the night before when the kids were sleeping, so I had no distractions. Two towels, sunscreen, bathing suits, swim diapers, a couple of tupperware bowls as stand-in water toys (You can imagine how excited Jett was to play with those.), lunch, water bottles, change of clothes, extra diapers, kitchen sink - you get the idea. We were loaded up.

I was most nervous about watching both of the boys in the pool at the same time. First, because it's a pool, and kids drown in pools. Secondly, because Jett is starting to run away from me when we are outside (or inside). Thirdly, because it's a pool and kids drown in pools. But, it's a kiddie pool, I reasoned, trying to psyche myself up. It starts out about ankle deep, and is only up to Jett's belly-button at the deepest point. Plus, it will be crowded with kids and it's in an enclosed space, and my friend will be there with her kids, and she has quick reflexes and Jett almost always does what she asks. Still, I was nervous. I was nervous that one of my kids would drown and the other one would run away. I was nervous about fitting in to my bathing suit. I was nervous about appearing nervous. I was a nervous wreck.

We walked in to that pool area with all of our stuff and all of my tension and I talked happily to Jett to mask my stress and I tried to walk lightly, the way relaxed mothers walk, and swing my backpack jauntily over my shoulder the way carefree people do. I wore a backpack and carried Kai on my hip and two towels around my shoulders, and held Jett's hand while he dragged the water bottle, and did it all with a smile, because this, carrying all of this crap into a watery death trap, this is pure fun. Changing two wiggly boys out of regular diapers and into swim diapers while they stand, sit, lay, wriggle on a towel - oops, make that a soaking wet towel (thanks, splashing kid) - oops make that scratchy concrete - this is fun. This was totally worth the half hour walk in the stroller just to get here.

The pool was packed with babies in sun hats and little girls in pink bikinis and boys in board shorts and twelve million water toys that were better than my plastic bowls. There were moms in shorts trying to play with their kids without having to sit in the water, and moms in the water, and one lone dad holding hands with his son. The water was shallow and the pool was small and I realized that nobody was going to drown. Jett wasn't going to run away from me because there were boats to play with and strangers to avoid. Here was his friend, with a toy boat even. Things were looking up.

Kai and I sat in the water and played with the toys the floated by. My friend and I chatted and kept an eye on our kids. We broke up some failed attempts at sharing and met some other moms and talked about what to do tomorrow, and I kind of relaxed. I kind of started thinking that this really isn't so difficult after all. I kind of started to think that I am living in the lap of luxury, cooling off in a pool in the middle of the workweek, with two wriggly kids and a soaking wet towel. I kind of started thinking that we might come to the pool every day. I started thinking that summer just got a whole lot easier. I love easier.