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There She Grows

Major back-posting here, but Happy Third Birthday to Lilah!!

She turned 3 on June 21, but her birthday celebration seemed to last for weeks.
Here’s a full rundown and a few photos. Read the rest of this entry »

April was a month full of friends, family, events, birthdays and excitement. I am not keeping up with this blog, at all.

So here is a quick and dirty rundown of what made April 2010 a fairly big month for us. Along with our particularly Big News at the end.

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This was part of the holiday card we sent out this yr. Miss two-and-a-half smothering Marley with her joy. FEEL IT. lol, its so them.

And here is Lil’s very first Santa experience. Taken at the SL moms club holiday party. She wasn’t afraid in the least; the moment he walked in the front door she ran right to him for a hug. Then started in with the hard questions: “Santa, where’s your sleigh?!” he pretended not to hear, lol.

She also put both hands on his stomach and said, “bowl full of jelly, mama?” I’ve read The Night Before Christmas a few times, and she really seems to love that part.

OK. So much. Hannukah, two christmases in two cities. So much family and friends and fun. This post shall serve as a placeholder until I return to elaborate on the holidaze. In the meantime – Happy Celebratory December Holiday of your choice, and Happy New Decade!

Toward the end October we travelled back home to spend a long weekend in the Chicago burbs. The centerpiece of our trip was the wonderful wedding of Amy and Larry, which I got to witness from the stage as a proud bridesmaid. It was full of fun and happiness. And the rest of our time was filled with a whirlwind of friends & family.

To my Angelenos: this is what fall looks like.

And without further ado, here’s our weekend in pictures (and a few videos)…

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We had a great halloween this year, with plenty of excitement and participation from Lilah. Its so fun to experience my long-time favorite holiday from this new perspective, to see it through the eyes of a young kid. She was gearing up for it all month; telling everyone about her costume, making decorations, becoming obsessed with books about halloween and the concept of trick or treating.

It felt like our halloween fun went on for weeks, which was pretty awesome. And when the day finally came, Lil really had a great time with it. And then we ‘grown-ups’ even managed to do some partying of our own. Here’s my long picture-post. Read the rest of this entry »

Two things.

1. My digital camera broke, many weeks ago. It just straight-up stopped working.  This doesn’t stop me from taking photos constantly, it just stops me from taking decent ones.  I’ve been shooting iPhone pics pretty much exclusively since then.  The iPhone is significantly better than no camera at all.

2. August was a really busy month for us and A LOT HAS HAPPENED.

I’ve considered writing one long post about everything but at this point that’s not gonna work.   So, expect some backdating here, because I have to talk about the fact that my sister Sarah Rose and Osman visited us, which was wonderful.  And the very next weekend we went up to Portland and had an awesome 5 days with Traci & Jim, and the very next weekend after that, I left the fam behind and went back to Chicago for some girlfriend party time in anticipation of Witte’s wedding.  With Mike’s birthday ending the month it seemed like every weekend was a major event.  But, there were a few other things I wanted to mention too.  Like our playgroups’ shifting dynamic, new chapters in my freelancing adventures, and visits to Descanso Gardens and Travel Town. Not to mention, all of Lil’s new tricks.   I’ll try to get to everything!

Pre-school is currently closed for a summer break. Which has left me devoid of work time and searching for new ways to keep Lil entertained indoors, avoiding the heat wave and wildfire ash showers. Daddy’s birthday was Friday, so Thurs seemed like a good time to try making sugar cookies with Lil.   I figured the activity could fill a portion of our day plus it would be a nice gift for Daddy.

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Some spicy dancing at the Atwater Street Party the other night. Lilah was reeeaaally into it. And she wanted to be a part of it.

After this, I tried to corral her back so the dancers could do their thing, but she was NOT having it. We ended up doing a conga line with all these people. The samba girl was a good sport, I think she was really enjoying Lil’s enthusiasm.

Every year at our reunion vacation, the cousins are expected to put on a little play for the grownups. i paid my dues for years doing this too, but lately I’ve managed to take a seat in the audience as one of the grownups. I am in my 30s now, after all. We (myself and my fellow cousins of the older echalon) would always do little skits. Sometimes we attempted to work in a bit of a roast on our aunts and uncles, depending on our level of annoyance at that time. But for the past few years they younger ones have opted for a singing and dancing variety show.

This year, Lilah insisted on being a part of every number. She would not entertain for a moment the idea that she was too young to involve herself. She is a born performer; if there is singing and dancing involved she is all about it. At first it was a bit of an annoyance to the other kids but, having no choice, they got over it. As far as Lilah was concerned, she was an integral part of the whole thing in its entirety. (which lasted about a half hour or 45 minutes total… throughout which Lilah did not sit down or stop moving even for a minute.) Here’s just one small part of the show – what was supposed to be a Sophie solo act.

After the cousin show was over, our whole family got up ‘on stage’ for a dance party. Good times! I love my fun family.

My kid is totally 2. Wow! I guess I may as well talk about her birthday party.   Like last year, we had a party at our house and invited some of her little friends and a lot of our big friends. We had some snacks and finger foods for people to munch on, and this time (unlike last year’s sweltering day) the weather permitted us to hang out in the backyard. Mike and Papa hung a sunshade up in the yard the day before, which helped a lot. We decorated our windows with glass markers and hung balloons everywhere. Mike pitched one of our camping tents for the kids to play in, and he painted one of our small outdoor tables with chalkboard paint for the kids to draw on. We had bubbles and pinwheels and flower leis and a bowl full of little instruments. We had a huge pitcher of grapefruit juice squeezed from our backyard tree for everyone to enjoy, along with vodka for the grown-ups. Lilah picked out her birthday dress and was thrilled with it, as soon as she put it on she was twirling around saying, ‘feel like princess!’ Seeing my happy kid made me a very happy mom.

Lots more after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

Today, our little girl is no longer 1. She is, officially, The Big 2. And, it has been a whirlwind of a weekend leading up to her big party today. I’ll have to write about all that later, once I find time to tackle the overwhelming amount of great photos and fun times involved.

This little post is about Dad. His day took the obligatory backseat to our celebration for Lilah, and of course he didn’t give it a thought.   He was too busy helping me get everything ready for the birthday party.   Doing whatever he could to help clean and organize the house, fixing stuff, setting up the backyard, manning the BBQ, making sure we had everything we needed plus giving Lil lots of big giant hugs, helping me stay sane and just being the awesome dad and husband he always is.

In the midst of our party preparations and Lil’s nonstop playtime with grandparents, she and I managed to sneak away to the garage-turned-craftroom to finish daddy’s great big card. We later displayed it at her party as a bit of a reminder that while Lil’ J is the star of this particular show, Mike should be celebrated too! Along with all the dads who came out to celebrate her birthday on their day.

Happy Fathers Day to all dads everywhere! And thank you, my beloved husband,  for everything you do each day for our little family and for being the best dad ever to our wonderful little girl for 2 years now!  Every kid should be so lucky to have a dad like you!

One of the moms in our playgroup is expecting her 2nd son next month, so the other day instead of meeting at the park, we had a little baby shower for her at my place.   We had lots of snacks and gifts and it was lovely to celebrate and chit-chat.  We also had a house full of crazed kiddos who are used to running rampant at a playground during this time slot.   Our house looked as if 7 small tornados had run through it afterwards.  Look how adorable they are, mushing together in our bed.   

On Memorial Day, we did something we haven’t really done before. We had a big BBQ in our backyard and invited a ton of people from various facets of our lives. Aside from Lilah’s birthday party, I don’t think we’ve ever had a gathering of this size at our place. I feel as though I’ve been putting off doing something like this for far too long so we just went for it. Our yard is finally at the point where I am ok with entertaining back there. We had a bunch of Mike’s friends, lots of my friends, we had our single friends AND some of my “mommy” friends along with their kids. This mix of folks was the very definition of worlds colliding…and it felt really good. Read the rest of this entry »

I really dig this whole, being a mom on mother’s day thing.
You really feel sorta special. Its nice.

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Yes, I am rapidly approaching my mid-thirties.    This year my birthday was pretty low-key, but somehow perfect.    We didn’t have a get-together or attend the ones we were invited to, due to Lilah’s illness.    That limited our plans, but it’s somewhat of a scapegoat.  There is also the issue of my declining sociability.   Things have changed and I sometimes feel like I’m teetering between two versions of myself, not entirely comfortable with either, and unsure how to remedy the distance between the two.

But what I want to talk about is Mike and how awesome he is, for all the big and little things.

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