Saturday, May 29, 2010

Fashion Glossary


The Tank Girl Look (Great Lori Petty movie from the 80s)

Sorority Girl (It's all about the red cup! There is juice in there, I swear.)

Elana Kagen Supporter.

The Granny Look. Pissed Off and Refusing Help.

Tired of posts of about What My Daughter is Wearing? Luckily, this was done over a few weeks, but this has been known to happen in one day!

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Leftovers


The best way to eat leftover birthday cake is Cottingham style.
Recipe for Cottinham Style Cake:
Put a slice of cake in bowl and pour milk over it.
1/2 cup to 3/4 a cup of milk should do it.
Eat cake. Drink milk.

A Trained Jedi

TIE fighter cake from the How to Be a Domestic Goddess cookbook by Nigella.
Death Star pinata smashed.

Lego set that he's, "been wanting for his whole life." Check.

Complete with Preschool Graduation.

The preschool teachers were crying, they probably won't see these kids again. They gave us a great start in life. I got a little teary eyed, but for the opposite reason. School's out? Booo hooo!

Friday, May 21, 2010

Flip Side

This was her watching him open presents and reading cards.

This was him watching her get a haircut. He wanted to be able to see her and cheered her on, at one point telling her, "Concentrate, Ellie."

Five!

When you are five, you get to do the whip cream on your waffles and strawberries by yourself!
We aren't five until 2:30 pm so we got into the Burke Museum with two adult tickets, free for four and under. He called this a 'totem pole submarine', it's a wood carved orca whale.

Reading birthday cards with Dad, he said he loved everything.

He asked for a TIE fighter months ago. Instant hugs when he opened the package.

Cookie cake and his favorite dinner-grilled cheese and tomato soup. This weekend is a Jedi Training party. We've got the detailing done on the Death Star pinata, inflatable light sabers and I've got to get to work on the TIE fighter cake! Five, I'm so excited.

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

First Haircut!










She enjoyed every minute of her first haircut! I can't recommend Fun Kuts in Lynwood enough. Great experience. Complete with hair glitter and a ribbon. Yes, photos show the process backwards, but I'm not in the mood to fix them.


Friday, May 14, 2010

Snow in May













For Mother's Day, DH told the kids they had to do whatever mom wanted. So, I slept in! We had a wonderful breakfast-vegetarian biscuits and gravy then we took a hike. I've been wanting to hike to the ice caves in Granite Falls. We packed a lunch and hit the road. My camera ran out of juice after the top, but here are some family snap shots. This was a perfect family hike-2.2 miles round trip with a lot of changes, you start in a marsh/bog, cross bridges over streams and rivers, then you are walking through big trees. Then, you are at the base of a glacier! Butters did the whole thing without complaint and the Princess was carried in a back carrier and on our shoulders.

We heard and saw avalanches, a first for all of us, it reminded me of the power of nature and the need to heed warning signs. I was happy to get back away from the snow and back in the forest. That night, we had another first for me and DH-a date night with a babysitter. We had a nice relaxing dinner and then we went to the grocery store for cat litter! How exciting! Next time, we'll do better and plan for a movie or roller skating or bowling.

Monday, May 10, 2010

Happy Mother's Day

By Anna Quindlen, Newsweek Columnist and Author

All my babies are gone now. I say this not in sorrow but in disbelief. I take great satisfaction in what I have today: three almost-adults, two taller than I am, one closing in fast. Three people who read the same books I do and have learned not to be afraid of disagreeing with me in their opinion of them, who sometimes tell vulgar jokes that make me laugh until I choke and cry, who need razor blades and shower gel and privacy, who want to keep their doors closed more than I like. Who, miraculously, go to the bathroom, zip up their jackets and move food from plate to mouth all by themselves. Like the trick soap I bought for the bathroom with rubber ducky at its center, the baby is buried deep within each, barely discernible except through unreliable haze of the past.

Everything in all the books I once poured over finished for me now. Penelope Leach., T. Berry Brazelton., Dr. Spock. The ones on sibling rivalry and sleeping through the night and early-childhood education, all grown obsolete. Along with Goodnight Moon and Where the Wild Things Are, they are battered, spotted, well used. But I suspect that if you flipped the pages dust would rise like memories. What those books taught me, finally, and what the women on the playground taught me, and the well-meaning relations --what they taught me, was that they couldn't really teach me very much at all.Raising children is presented at first as a true-false test, then becomes multiple choice, until finally, far along, you realize that it is an endless essay. No one knows anything. One child responds well to positive reinforcement, another can be managed only with a stern voice and a timeout. One child is toilet trained at 3, his sibling at 2. When my first child was born, parents were told to put baby to bed on his belly so that he would not choke on his own spit-up. By the time my last arrived, babies were put down on their backs because of research on sudden infant death syndrome. To a new parent this ever-shifting certainty is terrifying, and then soothing. Eventually you must learn to trust yourself. Eventually the research will follow. I remember 15 years ago poring over one of Dr. Brazelton's wonderful books on child development, in which he describes three different sorts of infants: average, quiet, and active. I was looking for a sub-quiet codicil for an 18-month old who did not walk.Was there something wrong with his fat little legs? Was there something wrong with his tiny little mind? Was he developmentally delayed, physically challenged? Was I insane? Last year he went to China. Next year he goes to college. He can talk just fine. He can walk, too. Every part of raising children is humbling, too. Believe me, mistakes were made. They have all been enshrined in the, "Remember-When-Mom-Did Hall of Fame." The outbursts, the temper tantrums, the bad language, mine, not theirs. The times the baby fell off the bed. The times I arrived late for preschool pickup. The nightmare sleepover. The horrible summer camp. The day when the youngest came barreling out of the classroom with a 98 on her geography test, and I responded, "What did you get wrong?". (She insisted I include that.) The time I ordered food at the McDonald's drive-through speaker and then drove away without picking it up from the window. (They all insisted I include that.) I did not allow them to watch the Simpsons for the first two seasons. What was I thinking? But the biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make while doing this. I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs.

There is one picture of the three of them, sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages 6, 4 and 1. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night. I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less. Even today I'm not sure what worked and what didn't, what was me and what was simply life. When they were very small, I suppose I thought someday they would become who they were because of what I'd done. Now I suspect they simply grew into their true selves because they demanded in a thousand ways that I back off and let them be. The books said to be relaxed and I was often tense, matter-of-fact and I was sometimes over the top. And look how it all turned out. I wound up with the three people I like best in the world who have done more than anyone to excavate my essential humanity. That's what the books never told me. I was bound and determined to learn from the experts. It just took me a while to figure out who the experts were.

Friday, May 7, 2010

Friday















Our day in pictures, also known as, How to Entertain the Kids All Day Until Daddy Comes Home From a Week Long Trip!