Happy! Happy! Mamas!

Happy Mother's Day to all my lovely mamas out there. I hope you enjoyed your day.

Perhaps you had breakfast in bed, got to sleep in a little, were able to escape for a spa day or a nice brunch or perhaps you were woken up a full 30-60 minutes earlier than usual by your children, one of whom carried a tea party basket full of homemade cards that she had worked on for over a week and kept hidden under her bed, cards that she signed from each child and my husband ("form, Tory").

They were super sweet and very detailed.

However nice they were it didn't quite erase the fact that my husband was out of town and that I was going to have to get to the grocery store with all three kids in order to pick up a few things for the barbecue we were going to later in the day at my sisters.

First stop, coffee.

Initially, I thought we would all go into Dunkies, sit down for a few minutes, eat a couple of donuts and then make our way to the supermarket.

This idea was quickly squashed. As we pulled into the Dunkies we passed a makeshift flower/balloon tent.

These are the tents with a spray painted "Roses" sign and giant carnival-sized pink stuffed animals hanging in plastic bags from the sides of the tent that pop up on Valentine's Day or Mother's Day as a last ditch stop for those who have zero foresight and are in pure desperation mode.

Guess what tent guys? Moms don't want giant, pink stuffed animals. Do you know who does want a giant pink stuffed animal? Five-year-old girls.

Know who wasn't going to buy her five-year-old girl a giant, pink stuffed animal from the side of the road? Me.

Thanks for ruining Mother's Day. To say the Lady was upset by this, would be an understatement. There were many tears. There was also no way we were all going to go sit inside and enjoy a pink frosted donut together, so I shifted Minnie-Ru into drive and we headed to the store.

There is nothing like having a Mother's Day brunch in the parking lot of a Fairway supermarket while listening to a Team Umizoomi movie. Umi! Zoomi! Umizoomi! Umizoomi!

Once the kids finished off their donuts, we headed in. I put a glazed-covered, still-in-pajamas-wearing QT into the front of the cart and tried to make it clear that the Ladies shouldn't be riding on the side of the cart. That lasted for about two minutes.

The Ladies were very helpful in picking out some hanging plants for my mom and for the Wild One's Omi, but like most trips to the store the need to leap and run and stop in front of moving carts overwhelmed them.

Good thing we only had a few things on the list to get. By the time we made it to the pasta aisle, QT had had enough. I relented, took him out of the cart and allowed him to dance in the aisle with his sisters to Mumford and Sons.

What can I say? The kid likes to move.

I was able to corral them to the check-out line and quickly pay. The Lady insisted on pushing the cart with no help. Just so we are clear, the basket was full of groceries, two hanging plants were hanging off the handle bar, QT was riding in the front and the Little Lady was holding onto the side. The cart was heavy, lopsided and she couldn't see over the top. We might have hit a few walls and doors, but we eventually made it back to the van.

Once there we revisited how unfair it was to not buy giant, pink stuffed animals.

I was eventually able to wrangle QT back into his donut-covered car seat and in an attempt to keep them all in one place for just a bit more time, we took a small detour to find two of the horses from last summer's "Horsin' Around" exhibit that had been bought by a family and were now just hanging out on their lawn.

Things were looking up.

Once home, it took another 20 minutes to get the kids inside. The puddles from the rain on Saturday were much too much of a distraction and I was just as happy to let them run around outside for a while.

In all honesty, it was actually a pretty good morning. It was a true reflection of Mother's Day to me. While it would have been great to have had a nice breakfast or to sleep for just a few minutes longer, I got to spend the day with my kids. That is something that I haven't been able to do for a long time and something I miss more than anything after going back to work full-time.

They may be too energetic in aisles, a little sticky, terribly put-out by stuffed animal injustices, and moved to dance at inconvenient times, but they are mine and I love them and I have become a better person because of them.

Do Not Enter Sandman

We took the kids up to the beach house over the weekend. We just wanted to get out a bit and I wanted to see my cousins.

The weather was supposed to be cool but sunny and after what I can only describe as a pretty shitty winter, I was desperate to let them get out and run.

We did the usual: cozy coupes, sidewalk chalk, bubbles, foot races and playing with whatever they could find in the garage.

Then we headed down to the beach. Did I mention how much I am looking forward to some beach time this summer? All the kids can walk on their own. I no longer have to hunch over and hold QT from behind. He is fully mobile and able to play independently. While watching three kids in the water may pose a bit of a challenge, it can't be any harder than trying to navigate two kids and an infant or two kids and an almost one-year-old who can't walk.

Things were finally looking up for Bean.

As a bonus we saw four dogs on the boardwalk. QT couldn't have been more excited about the dawg-dawgs.

Know what QT wasn't excited about?

The sand.

That's right. The Ladies took their shoes off the minute they stepped foot on the sand and headed for the playground.

QT got his shoes taken off, stepped in the sand, immediately put his hands up to be picked up and started whining.

WTF QT?

You are a beach baby. The first 10 weeks of your life were spent at that beach. Your sustenance was breast milk and beach sand. We are going to take trucks down to the seaside this summer, you are going to dig, we are going to splash. Are you seriously not going to take one step on the sand? I just bought you a brand-new perzonalized Batman beach towel.

Am I going to have to buy a bag of sand and gently apply it to your feet tablespoon by tablespoon each day until you grow accustomed to it?

If that is what it takes, I am doing it. There is no way I am spending the summer with a 28 lb., 2-year-old, stuck to my side as I try to manuever the hot sand with a beach bag, beach toys and chairs all the while trying to balance my giant iced coffee, with the hopes that I might have 15 minutes to read a gossip mag before your sisters make me accompany them into the freezing cold Sound.

If your dad is there for the weekend, I have no problem with you hanging out the house, watching the Yanks, eating Doritios. But if he is traveling and it is just me, you and the Ladies we are going to have some serious issues.

Mamma loves you and she also loves the beach. Let's get it together big guy it's only sand.

On Chest Freezers and Costco

I am getting a chest freezer.

Exciting right?

It has become a necessity. Suddenly we are really eating like a family of five. I am making mid-week runs to Stop & Shop for frozen waffles and there is no place to shove these morning-meltdown-saving disks of joy in our existing freezer.

Because of this impending arrival, I thought it best that I reup my Costco membership. We hadn't really used it as frequently in the past and if we did need a few things we were able to piggy-back on my sister's trips and get what we needed.

Oh giant potato-sack-sized bags of Doritos, how could we have ever let you go?

Saturday, I loaded up the Ladies and we headed out to run a few errands.

Let's just admit that Costco on a Saturday is a full-blown shit show. I miss those days of shopping at 10 a.m. on a Tuesday, where all I had to do was battle the blue-hairs.

First stop was the customer service desk, where a very friendly customer representative must have said "welcome back" to me like six times. Hey, I appreciate it but that guy also knows I am not leaving there without blowing at least a buck fifty on toilet paper.

Next stop, pick up the cart and head through those double-doors of possibility. The good thing about Costco is that they have double kid seats in the front. This is great when you have more than one kid. Not so great when one of those kids weighs 45lbs and is like super tall. So, I put the Little Lady in first and then tried to squish the Lady into the seat next to her but the Lady's legs are too long and she is having a hard time getting her foot through the opening and the Little Lady is complaining that she is getting squeezed and it is super windy and my arms strength can only be compared to that of a jellyfish, so things aren't starting out that great.

The Lady is so tall I can't see over her.

Costco -- look out because I cannot see the end of the cart in front of me and I have no idea where anything is because we haven't been to this store in like two years.

Did I mention I didn't make any list and we aren't getting the freezer until mid-week so I am not even buying the gigantic box of like 900 waffles?

Hmmm. . . what do we need?

Is it me or are people just terribly ignorant of their surroundings? By all means, just stop right in the middle of the aisle when there are like three people with giant carts filled with bulk produce, granola bars and underwear piling up behind you.

We did need to buy a few snacks for the Lady's classroom. We also needed milk and wipes. QT is still a wee bit away from wiping his own moon and there is nothing, nothing worse than realizing that you have an almost two-year-old with poop pants and no wipes left in the house.

We took two laps around the giant playground assembled in the middle of the store. We grabbed some strawberries and some juice boxes. Loaded up on pretzels and veggie sticks. The Lady insisted that she wanted SunnyD. A product I am almost 100% sure she has never had. There was no way I was going to buy a case of SunnyD, in fact she had a better chance of me buying the purple stuff.

The Little Lady wanted mini hot dogs, something we passed by at one point, but she wasn't sure where. After three trips around the refrigerated section she found the box she had seen. Little Lady, there is no way I am buying 80 pigs in the blanket for you.  

I forgot about the magic of Costco. That feeling of possibility, the feeling that you may at some point actually need 72oz of ranch dressing, three pounds of deli meat and 182 slices of bread. The delight one feels lifting whatever they are scooping into those little muffin liners and shoving it directly into your face.

We loaded up the cart with a couple of Hanna Anderson dresses, the wipes, some school snacks and that giant bag of Doritios for dad and we headed towards the checkout. It amazes me how you can feel like you have a cart full of stuff and still feel like you didn't get enough. Should I have gotten the Vanity Fair napkins? A tub of vitagummies? Perhaps a canoe. The possibilities at that store are endless. Once that freezer comes I say bring on the pigs in the blanket, the boxes upon boxes of waffles, bring on the bulk. We welcome it.

Welcome back. Welcome back indeed.

Pinning It Again

I am not sure what it is about this time of year but I am getting back into some Pinterest projects.

If you missed any of my attempts at recreating Pinterest projects, check out some of the links here.

Yesterday I came across this pin:

Source: etsy.com via Aileen on Pinterest

Granted, I don't have much grapic design background, but I was able to recreate these quickly and fairly easily in PowerPoint.

Not quite as artsy as the original but since I will probably never get around to framing and hanging these, I am not too worried. Best case scenario, these get hung in the bathroom and the Ladies and QT follow at least one of them a day!

I also pinned a recipe that I saw online. It was a Curtis Stone recipe for sausage rigatoni. Here is the original pin:

Source: self.com via Aileen on Pinterest

I was able to bang this out pretty quickly last night without the fire alarm going off and with QT hanging off my leg. I did omit the kalamata olives though and added a bit of baby spinach instead of parsley.

Here is to hoping that when we put our place back on the market at the end of the month that someone buys it quick so that I can attempt to recreate more and more of these projects. Oh the possibility of Pinterest fails are pretty good. . .

As Seen on TV

So as you well know from my last post, the Lady has eagerly been anticipating the arrival of her "Hot Buns" in the mail.

I have been hoping upon hope that they actually work and that she won't be super disappointed if they fall out of her hair after two minutes.

I finally got the email that the Hot Buns had shipped but in the meantime the Little Lady and I went on an excursion to Michael's to pick up some poster frames for the Lady's artwork. As is typical on any outing with the Little Lady, she wanted to buy a million things, had to make a stop at the bathroom and did some serious skipping around the store.

What did she find? Why the As Seen on TV section that included the Magic Ice Cream Shake, something she has been desperately wanting ever since she saw it on a commercial. Again, advertisers I have to applaud your efforts at selling to the under-5 set. If they had credit cards our house would be overflowing with even more useless junk.

I was dubious of course, but the Little Lady was insistent. I had to buy it because on the other side of the aisle was, you guessed it, Hot Buns. Why wait for the mail delivery? The Lady needed her Hot Buns and apparently the Little Lady needed some Ice Cream Magic. I am either A. the greatest or B. the worst mother ever.

We headed home and as soon as the Lady got home from school we tried the Hot Buns. I have to say I was impressed with how easy it was to do. Basically you just put a pony tail in the hair, take the Hot Buns and roll it up like you would a curler, snap it, and then distribute the hair around it. It comes with two sizes, small and large. The small was more than adequate for the Lady and I gave the large one to our sitter because I have no hair.

Anyway, the Lady was initially impressed, but as with all things new it takes her a while to get used to things so she had me take it out about 5 minutes after it got put in. Know what isn't easy about Hot Buns? Taking it out. Imagine trying to unroll hair off of Velcro. Yeah, that's about right. There was some hair pulling, some complaining from the Lady and I might have had to throw out a fistful of her baby wisps, but hey, sometimes there is a price for beauty.

The next morning the Lady was willing to give it another try. I had to do a high pony, not a medium or low pony. The Lady couldn't have been happier. We topped it off with the light blue scrunchy I had to buy her for ballet and I sent her off to school. She came home with the Hot Buns still in, maybe not as neat as when she left, but I was impressed.

How was the Magic Ice Cream Shake you ask? Well let's just say it took longer than the promised 3 minutes, was a bit more work then anticipated, and ended up tasting like whipping cream with a bit of vanilla extract in it. The Little Lady did like to shake it, but I think we will be using the cup and spoon provided to eat actual ice cream that I have purchased from the store.

What else was on that As Seen on TV stand? The Callous Clear, which the Ladies have both insisted that I get for my feet. I believe the Little Lady's exact words were "Mommy, you should get that because your feet aren't good." Thanks Little Lady, but it isn't flip flop weather yet and Momma has a few more things to worry about than her feet. She is totally right though. Maybe I should get it. . . .

When Everything Isn't Beautiful at the Ballet

My husband was out of town all last week. My mom was a huge help and we totally managed. The plan for the weekend was simple, the Ladies would be starting their new ballet class and then we would hang with the Wild Ones on Saturday. Sunday would probably be a lot of TV time until my husband got home, but I was well prepared for that.

We made a decision to sign the Ladies up at the Wild Woman's ballet studio. Even though it is a bit further from our house and we really liked our old ballet place, the new place has multiple studios and the Ladies could both take class at the same time. At our old place the Little Lady was going at 9:30 am and then the Lady was going at 11:30 am. It took up most of our morning and was a lot of back and forth. In all honesty, I am all for simplification at this point in my life, plus the Little Lady was very excited to be in a class with the Wild Woman.

Know who wasn't excited? The Lady.

I understand that change is hard for her, but every time ballet was mentioned during the week it turned into dramatics. She hates ballet, she doesn't want to go, she wanted to sign up for gymnastics, she doesn't like to dance. . . the list went on and on and on.

Friday night I was met with a bit of resistance as soon as I walked in the door from work. She was already whining about going. In an attempt to try to get organized and get everyone out of the house by 8:45 the next morning, I went looking for the ballet stuff. We have leotards and tights a plenty. At this studio there is a "dress code" for each class. The Little Lady would be pretty in pink while the Lady was supposed to wear a blue leotard and pink tights. Luckily we had a blue leotard. My sister was bringing some new ballet slippers that would fit the Lady that we won at the Wild Man's Christmas party at school and we would be set to go.

However, I couldn't find the ballet stuff. It had been in the same place for about six months. Finally, I found it spread on the bottom of the Ladies' closet and in general disarray. I got organized, packed the bag and listened to an increasing level of discord from the Lady that continued until I put her to bed.

I tried to talk it out, see what it was that was bothering her, but I did not give in and promise her anything. I did make mention that if she didn't want to actually participate she could watch, but from inside the studio, not outside where we would be watching the wonderful world of dance on closed captioned TV screens or through a one-way mirror.

She was not convinced. In fact, she took the time to draw me a picture of how she was feeling. I think art therapy is the way to go with this girl. . .



You have to love the X's.


Ever the perfectionist, the Lady made a second draft with the correct spelling of ballet and a much more colorful presentation. I do love the giant frown on her face.


I get the point Lady.



So at 6:45 the next morning the Lady shows up at my bed already complaining about ballet. I let her know that we are going one way or the other because the Little Lady has class as well. For the next hour and a half, we battle. She comes downstairs smirking because she "hid" the ballet slippers. Mind you, these weren't even her slippers they were the Little Lady's and she wasn't so sinister that she didn't immediately tell me that they were in her sock drawer.

The Little Lady was dressed and ready to go in her full-on pink. QT was dressed and ready to go in his Spiderman shirt and the Lady eventually got dressed, but in leggings and a t-shirt. I did manage to get them all in the car and we were the first ones at the studio at 9:15. I was pretty impressed with myself.

Know what else was at the studio? A wide array of ballet leotards, tights and tutus. I was able to bribe convince the Lady that maybe a new light blue leotard would be nice. I was also not 100% sure the blue leotard we had would still fit her. $28 for a leotard I wasn't even sure she would be wearing more than once? Sure. $9 for a pair of pink tights? You betcha.

I was finally able to dress the Lady and get her in the vicinity of the studio. We tried walking in once. We tried walking in twice. Finally, the dance teacher came out and escorted her in. I watched like an anxious dance mom from the window and she finally started to participate.

When her class ended, we bought a new blue tutu. We bought a matching blue hair scrunchy from the dollar bin. She was energized, invigorated and full of love once again for the ballet.

I was also told that I had to order her "Hot Buns," which are a product she saw on TV that helps create the perfect bunhead. Putting in my order now.

So after almost a full week of complaining, I had a girl who wouldn't take off her leotard, who insisted on dancing around my sister's house for the rest of the afternoon, who woke up on Sunday morning and asked to put on her ballet outfit and who is constantly hounding me for the "Hot Buns."

Hot Buns. Not sure if this will actually work in the Lady's hair, but we are apparently going to find out.

After class

Showing off her moves.

Everything is beautiful at the ballet indeed.

Some Shots from the Snowstorm

Hope everyone got shoveled out! Here are a few pics of the kids out and about in the snow this weekend.

The Lady

QT

The Little Lady

The Three Beans