Weekend Wrap-up: Back to the Beach

Summer is finally here! The Lady's last day of school was Friday and the Little Lady had her last day of camp. I was able to pick up the Little Lady, get the Lady off the bus, take both ladies to the nail salon and get everything organized for the weekend.



I can't, this kid is just too cute!



I would like to say that we had a lovely meal out on Friday with the kids, sitting al fresco on the sidewalk, enjoying the sweet summer air to celebrate the solstice, but then I would be totally lying. It was, per usual, a mess of bathroom breaks and trying to corral QT. As my husband said "remind me to never do this again anytime soon." Oh well, we tried.



A very pensive Little Lady post-afternoon pass out.



The next morning, I got up early, met up with two amazing ladies and ran a 5k. I wasn't fast, but I wasn't last. It was a step in the right direction and I am so glad that I did it.

My husband meanwhile, put the kids in the car in pj's and headed up to the beach. Next time I will remember to give him the keys to the house as well as the code to the garage. And whoever moved the compressor to fill up the pool from its spot in the garage is in trouble, not only because my hubby had to fill it with the hand pump but because I had to hear about it.

As always there were a ton of cousins to hang out with and since my husband had to drive back home that night to fly out the next morning we had a little sleepover.

This sleepover wasn't as bad as the Hunger Games themed one last summer, but they kids did go to bed super late, QT slept with me and rolled out of the bed in the middle of the night, and the Lady showed up at my bed at 6:15 in the morning, followed by her sister and the Big Guy. This may or may not have contributed to a few breakdowns throughout the morning by my children, but it didn't stop us from getting to the beach. 



The big guy



I thought that by having the ladies carry their own chairs that I would have enough hands to carry everything else. This was not the case. I will not forget my beach cart next time. 

Know what else I had to carry? I am sure you all know the answer to this. Could it have been a newly turned 2-year-old who about 10 feet from the boardwalk realized he was at the beach and started walking in the other directions crying "I no want to go"?  Oh QT. Buddy, this is your third summer at the beach. Don't start it off this way. Don't do it.





The Lady. Look, I didn't think it was a string bikini when I picked this up from Old Navy and by the time I realized it, she had already removed the tags and was modeling in it. I am in some trouble with this one.



So, I left some stuff at the top of the beach, transported QT, who was suction cupped to my side, plopped him in a chair and got the rest of the things I needed. Since the kids were immediately in the water, I moved my chair closer to the water, put QT down with a truck in the sand and hoped for the best. That lasted about 7 minutes. I then had to cradle him in my arms while he whined about wanting milk (not going to happen) and his blankies (probably should have brought at least one of them down with me) until he fell asleep and I could put him under the umbrella where he slept soundly for about two hours. When he woke up, he would only walk on the towels and sit with his feet up in his chair. He did allow me to carry him to the water's edge but did not let me put him down. One good thing is that at the end of the day we took everyone to the sprinkler park at the beach and he warmed up to that pretty quickly. It is going to be a long summer if this kid can't even put one foot in the sand!



Because there is nothing better than being 2 and hanging in the pool.



I was just happy to have a full day down at the beach. That definitely hadn't happened since QT was born and to see how excited the ladies were to play and splash at the beach it totally worth having to carry a 26 pound kid on your hip for a couple hours.

QT is a cutie.

In addition to bringing the beach cart next time, I will also remember to reapply the sunscreen. At 10 a.m. when I was letting the Little Lady try to apply spray sunscreen to my legs with a button she could barley push with her tiny little hands, my cousin said that perhaps I should redo those pale, white legs when we got down to the beach. Know what never happened? That is right. Not only do I have a sunburn on my legs, it is in the worst pattern imaginable. Think of scribbles a three and a half year old might draw on a piece of paper and apply it to my legs. Total JV move. It won't happen again.

The best part was last night as I was trying not to let any blanket touch my burning legs, and the Little Lady was once again by my side watching the Prisoner of Azkaban because she was still awake after passing out for a full hour from 6:15-7:15 on the ride home from the beach, I complained about my legs bothering me. She said "but mommy didn't I do a good job putting on your sunscreen"? Always on my game, I turned those burnt legs into a teaching moment about reapplying sunscreen. I will also not be able to wear a skirt or dress to work at all this week. 



This is what 9:45 p.m. looks like at the beach house. 6:15 a.m. wasn't so adorable.



I will say that my kids slept over an hour later this morning than they did yesterday and I am totally looking forward to our next beach day. I am thinking about getting a covered wagon for QT so I can just pull him on the beach and leave him in there with some trucks, it is either that or start wearing him Bjorn-style again.

Wish me luck this summer. . .







QT Turns 2!

I can't believe my guy is 2.

We had a little party for QT on Saturday to celebrate. Here are a few pics.  




The Lady found this hat in her aunt's room. QT rocked it.

 

Nothing like licking the cake!

Finally got his own scooter!

I am not sure if he could be any cuter. Biased? You betcha.

On Boobs, Box Tops and Breakdowns: A Recap of Last Week

On Boobs

For my anniversary last week I gave my husband new breasts. I am pretty sure that beats the set of Callaway irons he just got and I think he will probably get more use out of them too.

Turns out I am getting surgery, which will include a boob lift. There is nothing that says marriage more than standing in a small examining room having a doctor you just met measure your boobs and take photos of them while you awkwardly try to make jokes about throwing in a tummy tuck and your husband casually looks on. I am not sure he signed up for that on that gorgeous June day eight years ago, but I am always grateful for his unwavering support.

For more on the boob situation you can check out The Fight and Write, post will be up soon.

On Box Tops

I can't believe the Lady is going to be done with kindergarten next week! Throughout the year her school does box top drives and the last one ran through May. Her class never wins.

I like to think that there are these crazy box top moms out there who have been stockpiling those precious pieces of cardboard, who have signed up online to reap extra rewards and who eat enormous amounts of Old El Paso products in order to gather enough of these box tops to make a difference. I assume their kids are usually in the upper grades (because it always seems like a second grade class wins) and these woman are experts on stock-up sales and all things box topish. I am secretly jealous of them.

The Lady always comes home talking about the ice cream party or hot chocolate party or ice pop party the winning class will receive. In turn, I start cutting off box tops from unopened cereal boxes, Yoplait Dora yogurts, and may or may not buy extra fruit snacks (even though I am trying to cut down on serving them to my kids) just because they are 2 for $4 and they have box tops. I send them in to no avail. Our $2 worth of box tops usually don't cut it.

Thanks to reupping at Costco and the large amount of Honey Nut Cheerios my kids eat, I have been stockpiling a few box tops of my own. So in May, I diligently cut out and taped box top after box top onto the photocopied sheets provided and sent them in every Friday. In the PTO email that comes out every week, I was not surprised when I didn't see the Lady's class on the list of classes in the lead. Then one of my co-workers gave me a few Ziploc bags filled with those tiny cardboard sweet dreams.

I sent in 82 box tops on the last day.

Last Monday the Lady came home and said that she heard her name over the loudspeaker as the winner from her class for the most money raised for the jog-a-thon (many thanks to my husband's coworkers who donated a few bucks towards the cause). She also said that her class won the box tops. I scoffed at her. She had told me one other time that she had heard her teachers name over the loudspeaker about the box tops, but it turned out that her teacher had only won some sort of gift basket. She also came home one day telling us that she was reading at a second grade level, we scoffed at that as well. Turns out she is (like how I threw that wee bit of info in there. What? I can brag about my baby bean!) and turns out the Lady was right about the box tops.

When the PTO email came there it was in black and white. They won. I felt a ridiculously large sense of accomplishment. Her class won with a total of 453 box tops, the Lady brought in like a quarter of those. I felt like kicking up my heels and making an extensive taco dinner with fruit snack-topped iced Betty Crocker cupcakes and a side of Go-gurts.

Oh, if you think I won't be one of those moms next year. . .let the collecting begin.

On Breakdowns

If you follow The Three Bean Salad on Facebook (go ahead and "like" it you know you want to) you know that my car broke down on my way home from work last week. It was my anniversary and my husband and I had 6:30 reservations. At first I thought that I had a flat tire, but then the check engine light started flashing. Luckily, I had just pulled off the Parkway and was on a very commercial road with a ton of car repair shops. I coasted into the first one available and tried to call my husband. He didn't answer.

I turned off the car, waited a couple of minutes and tried starting the car again with the hope that the issue had magically disappeared. It hadn't. I tried my husband again, texted and called one more time. Still no answer. I went into the shop, told them my problem and sat down. They told me to take what I needed out of the car. This consisted of my badge for work, my giant chemo blanket and a blue yoga mat.

My husband called me back. Traffic during rush hour in Fairfield County, Connecticut, is never easy to navigate. My husband's office was probably three miles from where I was. There was the possibility of it taking 30 minutes for him to get to me. He told me to call a cab.

I met him at a Toys R Us. Payed $10.80 for a four minute cab ride, tossed my blanket into the back of the van and headed out to dinner.

We were 15 minutes late but it was well worth it, not only to celebrate with my husband, to enjoy a night out alone without having to chase QT through the restaurant, but to also eavesdrop in on the conversation of a very WASPy couple sitting next to us, who had very firm beliefs on Catholics, Latinos, massage therapists and Socialism. Happy Anniversary to me!

The church where we got married