Winter fun

Holiday pictures

Decorating our Christmas tree. We intentionally did not buy a huge tree this year.

Making gingerbread houses at a friend's house.

Going to see the model trains at our library. Wes was in heaven.

Light show at the Chicago Botanic Gardens.

Light show at the Chicago Botanic Gardens. We brought glasses that make lights into gingerbread cookies, candy canes, reindeer, etc. It was great.

Check out this humongous inflatable in our neighborhood! The kids are so tiny compared to it!

Izzy turns 6 (a month ago!)

 IZZY TURNS 6

Morning birthday balloons

Height: 48”. Surprisingly enough she barely grew between July and her birthday.

Weight: 62 lbs

Physical milestones: Izzy is super strong as evidenced by the fact that she can pick up my mother (who weighs 120 lbs). She continues to be fast and won first place in the Healthy Kids Running Series in the spring (50 yard dash) and placed third this fall in the K & 1st grade division (1/4 mile). She is a better swimmer at this point and didn’t use floaties this summer. She had been doing karate this fall but we found that it is simply not enough exercise for her so we have enrolled her into an obstacle-course class which she is LOVING so far. It’s 45 minutes of climbing walls, monkey bars, pushups, situps, etc. Next month she will also start basketball classes through the park district.

Language/Reading: Izzy has a good number of sight words and likes to try to read things. She is very curious about words so if we use a word that she doesn’t know, she will ask us what that word means. Izzy doesn't quite have the "r" sound, so rabbit sounds like "wabbit." I'm told it's normal and she will grow out of it.

Loves: Unicorns, glitter, sparkly things, soft things, puzzles, art, the Eagles and the Cubs (Woo hoo!)

Personality: Izzy is still super competitive. She is also still fairly emotional and gets upset (cries) quickly. She can be smug at times and often wants to parent Wes and tell him what his punishment should be for doing something wrong. LOL.

Favorite Toy: Izzy has been big into games. She is fairly obsessed with Mancala and every time we pick her up from her after-K program she is playing. She also really enjoys Monopoly Jr, Scrabble Jr, and Ticket to Ride.

Favorite Book: She is making her way through an illustrated version of the first Harry Potter book with CP that she got for her birthday.

Enjoying some pizza before the Chicago Red Stars game

Sleeping Habits: These days she goes to bed around 8-8:30 and wakes up around 6:30-7. There is no more nap and we basically have stopped with required "quiet time" upstairs in her room. Our bedtime routine is to get her upstairs to change into pjs and pullup, brush her teeth, and read her 1-2 books or 1-2 chapters of a book. Generally she is in her room with a flashlight looking at books for a bit before falling asleep.

Eating: Izzy can eat A LOT of food if she is hungry. Her favorite is still mac n cheese.

Teeth: Izzy has lost FOUR teeth so far (all on the bottom).

After her most recent tooth loss two days before Christmas

Potty: At 6 Izzy has no issues during the day, however she still needs a pullup at night. I'm pretty sick of buying pullups so I'm hoping that the chemical in her brain switches "on" soon.

Clothes: Size 7/8 or usually a M. Size 1.5 youth shoe. She loves to wear athletic leggings and continues to wear a lot of dresses with leggings underneath.

Sickness: A few months ago Izzy turned her ankle and got a high ankle sprain. Unfortunately her doctor said that she is likely to have it happen again because of the type of sprain...so I taped her ankle like I remember physical therapists used to tape my ankle when I would sprain it.

Mommy's first tape job

Also, she had lice (that's a story for another post).

Treating Izzy's hair

Media: We have relaxed our tv standards a bit as the kids usually get a show or two each weekend day and sometimes we will do Friday night movie night as well. The kids do not get any iPad time, nor do they get to play with our phones. We'll see how much longer that lasts....

Big sister: At a recent wine night one of my friends was complaining about the fact that she has to "pretend play" with her daughter. All I could think was, man I'm so glad that my kids pretend play together. The only thing the kids ask me to do is be the "mommy monster." DONE.

Pulling Wes

Birthday: As usual, Izzy's birthday turns into at least two weeks of celebrating Izzy. It started with her shared birthday party with her best friend (third year in a row). This year they went to a nearby climbing gym. Then it was Izzy's actual birthday the day after Thanksgiving. All four of us had the day off so we went to the Field Museum in downtown Chicago to check out dinosaurs and finished the day by going to dinner at a spy restaurant with the most ridiculous dessert. Finally, the Sunday after Thanksgiving we had a family birthday for four of us that have November/December birthdays (me, Izzy, my BIL, and my dad).

Family birthday party

Birthday party with friends

Ridiculous dessert at the spy restaurant

We love our energetic, smart, athletic little lady and can't wait to see what she does this year!

Fall fun

We have been very busy on the weekends with fall activities.

Every year we head to my parent's house in MI and go to a local farm to pick out pumpkins and go apple picking.

To make sure that the kids are getting lots of exercise, we got them out to a local woody trail so that they could run around under the beautiful changing leaves.

CP had a work trip and it was nice enough for pumpkin carving to do it outside, so Wes mainly drew on his pumpkin with markers, while I mostly cut Izzy's pumpkin for her since I couldn't find the kid-friendly pumpkin carving knives.

The day of Halloween the snow started early and didn't stop until about 6pm so we ended up with cold and snowy Halloween! Izzy went with her current obsession, a unicorn, and Wes had a scary glow in the dark skeleton costume....but refused to wear the mask and opted for a hat.

Day in the Life- Fall 2019

Day in the Life- Fall 2019

Thursday, October 17th

CP is 43, NSC is 40, Izzy turns 6 in one month, Wes is 3.25. 

Marshmallow and Cocoa are ?

It has taken me two weeks to edit this and post it. Such is my life these days.

3:30 am- I wake up to Izzy crying. She had a bad dream and wants me to sleep with her. That is not going to happen so I rub her back and talk to her about good things she can think about before she lets me go back to bed.

5:30am- my alarm goes off and CP gets out of bed to shower and have breakfast. I roll back to sleep. In my dream I am super pregnant and about to have a baby (uhhhh not going to happen).

6:30am- CP wakes me up by turning on the light in our room and does the same for the kids in their rooms. I get out of bed to go to the bathroom but need to wait for Izzy to finish peeing. Wes is still hiding in his bed. Izzy runs back into her room to put her clothes on but starts crying because the pants are too tight. I check the label and they are last year's pants so I get her another bigger pair. Wes is yelling for me to help him get dressed so I head into his room while telling him to ask nicely. I get him dressed and then kids head downstairs with CP to get some grapes. I put in my contacts and get dressed quickly to head downstairs.

6:50am- CP is unloading the dishwasher and I tell him that he should leave. Kids give CP hugs, I give him a kiss goodbye. Kids start fighting over stickers (eye roll). I make the kids get their shoes on and jackets as we are heading to school soon. I text my neighbor that her daughter can come over whenever she is ready. I get the kids out the door and turn on the car to warm it up a bit. Today is the first day our neighbor's daughter will drive with me to school and she is hesitant. Her mom has to walk her over and I try to pump her up by saying that she can sit in the back with Izzy and that we have cool sliding doors (this is her first time being in a car with anyone that is not family). I cringe at the mess that is my car but I guess it could be worse?

7:10am- We eventually get her in, everyone gets buckled up and I slowly drive the girls to Kindergarten. Wes talks nonstop.

7:25am- I drop off the girls and then deal with Wes' crying fit because I won't pick him up to walk to the car. I finally get him in the car after refusing to pick him up and we drive to his school.

7:40am- Drop Wes off, see friends on the way out and head back to my house. Make a cup of coffee with Sugar Free Peppermint Mocha creamer, make eggs and eat on a corn tortilla with a little bit of salsa. Spend too much time reading the news (Elijah Cummings died- oh no!).

8:15am- I head upstairs to turn my computer on. Check email and start to get settled into work.

9:15am- I check my schedule and realize that I should work out now so that I have time to shower before I have to get on camera for a later meeting. I head downstairs to do Day 10 of 100 Morning Meltdown (Beachbody). Thankfully it is re-vibe which is a stretching day. We did a lot of leg work and lifting yesterday so this feels nice.

9:40am- I'm walking up the stairs when my colleague calls and we have a quick conversation about our onsite visit to a community next week.

10am- First scheduled phone call of the day.  I'm mostly lost in the conversation as it is around work plan management on our contracts so I mostly just listen.

10:40am- Decide to quickly shower in between calls. Usually I try to work out and shower and then start my day a little later but that didn't happen today.

11am- Another call which is scheduled for an hour but ends up only lasting 15 minutes. Woo hoo! I do other work.

12:15pm- Downstairs for lunch. Salmon, butternut squash soup and a little 4 bean salad while I read The Daily 202 from the Washington Post. I do the dishes.

12:45pm- Back upstairs and working again. Since it's after lunch it's time for Marshmallow to start bothering me because the cats have now eaten all of their dry food and are DESPERATE FOR FOOD. FEED ME!

1:25pm- I'm a bit tired so I head downstairs to make some hi-caffeinated black tea to warm me up AND wake me up!

1:30pm- Our internal team meeting starts and we weren't going to do an on-camera call after all because two of the team members are gone, but one team member just got an adorable kitten so we turn on our cameras to ooh and aah. Marshmallow is close by so I pick her up to show her off too. A quick 30 minute call.

2:45pm- I go into my candy drawer and eat a bunch of Skittles. Damn. Afterward I pop a stick of Watermelon sugar free gum into my mouth to try to curb my sweet tooth. I work on a presentation for next week and print out some documents.

3:45pm- I hear a squirrel squawking outside, possibly at me so I open up the window so that the cats can hear and see the squirrel. They get very interested in watching him race up and down the tree outside and end up jumping on the windowsill for a closer look.

4pm- I order a 12 cup bundt pan for pick up at Target in a few hours for my mom's birthday tomorrow (we are headed up to MI). I grab a few pretzel thins for a snack as well.

4:30pm- I need to get out of the house so I take a quick walk a few blocks away to mail a letter. I start listening to the newest Pod Save America podcast on the debate but end up calling CP to figure out dinner. I have a late call and CP is headed out with a friend tonight so we decide that after CP picks up the kids, he will pick up Subway on the way home. I head upstairs and find out that you can order Subway online.

5pm- I jump on a call with a community on the West Coast. Looks like I will have to fly out there in mid November.

5:40pm- CP texts to let me know that kids are crying. There may have been something that I was supposed to attend tonight??? I have no idea what he is talking about and hope that he is joking.

5:55pm- Off my call and head downstairs to feed the cats before the crying kids come home.

6- Izzy is crying because we missed something to do with dodgeball and dinner? (I found out the next morning that we were not receiving any emails from the enrichment director and we did miss something the night before.) The kids and I sit down to eat Subway and are halfway through dinner when CP's friend arrives from the train (they are going out for dinner and drinks).

6:28- I rush the kids out the door and drive Izzy to Girls Scouts. It's nice to be able to drop her off so that Wes and I can run an errand. As we leave the church, I ask Wes if he needs to go to the bathroom, he says no. As soon as I have him buckled in the car, he tells me that he has to go to the bathroom. Seriously?!?!? So we head back inside to the bathroom.

6:40- Off again and headed to Target to pick up the bundt pan. When I am walking through the self-checkout area, a woman is having trouble (English is definitely not her first language), so I help her check out.

7:25- Wes and I are back at the church and find Izzy in the gym holding a can of root beer on her knee. I guess she banged her knee but as soon as I arrive, she starts running around with her friends so she is clearly fine.

7:40- I wrangle the kids in their jackets and we head home. I get both of them upstairs and start with getting Wes to use the bathroom, put Wes' foot in a water bath then slap a Compound W bandaid on his wart on the bottom of his foot, and then brush his teeth. 

We head into his room to put on his pajamas while Izzy brushes her teeth and puts on her pajamas.

 The kids fight over what book I should read but finally settle on Marlon Bundo (the John Oliver book). Their dialogue is hilarious as at the end, the two boy bunnies marry- Wes-" How old are the bunnies? I think 5 or 6." Izzy- "You have to be older to marry. Bunnies don't marry."

I ask Izzy to head to her room while I put Wes to bed. I say good night to Wes and tuck him into his blankets. 

I head into Izzy's room and she is worried about having bad dreams again tonight. I tell her a few things to think about as she is sleeping.

8:21- I head downstairs and change a load of laundry and scoop the cat litter. While watching Grey's Anatomy I make soup. 

The cats start licking each other which means they will be fighting at some point tonight. 

I then take out the recycling.

9:40- I finish making the soup, Grey's is over, and it's time for the cats to play. I start This is Us as I wash dishes. 

10:10- I package up the soup to put in the freezer.

10:30- CP gets home. I bring the soup down to the freezer. We talk for a bit and head upstairs. I change into pajamas, brush my teeth, take out my contacts and get into bed. I kiss CP goodnight and the light goes off at 11pm.

Should have known better

Ugh. I did something really stupid about two months ago. We were invited over to a friend’s BBQ and impromptu soccer game (they are Costa Rican- I think they called it a milangro?). I started out the soccer game wearing sneakers but the game was being played in their side yard which had a slight hill to it and my sneakers tripped me up a few times. My friend noted that people are supposed to play in bare feet, so I took my shoes off. BIG MISTAKE.

My feet didn’t hurt during the game...in fact it was nice to run around in bare feet for once. But as soon as I woke up the next morning I knew I had made a huge mistake and my plantar fasciitis had reared its ugly head again. Since then I have tried running a few times and even set out to start my 15k running plan but decided that it wasn’t worth the pain.

So I am currently signed up for the Hot Chocolate 15k early next month but won’t be ready for it. I dropped down to the 5k this week since I could run that in my sleep (albeit slowly). I really like running the race and would feel weird wearing around the gear if I didn’t actually run....

What a bummer. I’m sick of PF being a constant in my life and always messing up my ability to run and enjoy it.

Trip to NH

It had been FOUR YEARS since we had been back to NH, the last time being after CP's grandmother died. I wasn't even pregnant with Wes yet. It was a long overdue trip, although it was a bit annoying for CP to figure out how to jump between his divorced parents while also seeing friends and getting out to do fun things.

We flew in Thursday into Boston, grabbed our rental car and headed up to NH. I tried to tell the kids about all of the cool things in NH, including the Old Man in the Mountain (RIP). The ENTIRE TRIP, despite both me and CP telling Wes over and over that the OMitM was not a real man, but what looked like the face of a man in the side of a mountain, Wes kept asking about "the man." He was very worried about the man. (*sigh*)

Friday we got to hang out with CP's childhood friends and although it had been a while since we have seen them, it was great to see how big some of their kids had gotten and to hang out with them. We told Izzy that we were going to Dennis' house and she said "Why are we going to Dr. Bob's house?" She thought that we were going to her dentist's house. Silly girl. That night we hung out with CP's aunt and uncle and Wes spiked a 102.5 fever while CP was with him at urgent care.

Wes knocked out on the couch with a fever

Amazingly enough, Wes rallied and despite getting a later start than we had planned for, we headed up with CP's mom to hike Franconia Notch State Park (Flume). We told Wes that if he was able to hike the entire two miles by himself without anyone carrying him he would get ice cream before lunch. Amazingly enough, he did it all by himself and enjoyed his ice cream.

Starting the hike

Celebrating the fact they both made it to the top by themselves!

We were super close to where we got married so after lunch, we stopped by the Inn and took some pictures since it is almost our 10 year anniversary! We were going for a nice picture of the four of us in front of the Inn's sign when the kids decided to drop on their knees and pretend they were tigers. We just had to laugh.

The next day we did a 10 mile canoe trip down a local river. CP and I had Wes in our canoe while Izzy was in a canoe with my MIL and her husband. 

They fought almost the entire time and I felt bad for Izzy because she seemed pretty bored. He was being pretty condescending towards my MIL and I wasn't too excited for Izzy to hear that and to think that was okay. We all survived but we were pretty happy to get out of those canoes. Afterwards we took Izzy on a tour of CP's childhood schools so that Wes could get a car nap.

I was supposed to leave that night for Chicago but thunderstorms cancelled my flights so I ended up staying in the hotel to work all day while CP and the kids went to the beach. I had a tremendously hard time getting out of NH the following night and barely made my connecting flight (which was also delayed due to bad weather/lightning) and didn't get home until after 2:30am. CP and the kids came home that night and Izzy had her first day of Kindergarten the next day.

After our trip I mentioned to CP that it can't be another four years before we go out to NH. His parents are getting older and it's a good chance to take a fun vacation and get out to the mountains.

Kindergarten

Trying to catch up on blog posts....

August 21st was Izzy's first day of Kindergarten. I was so worried about Wes and not that worried about Izzy because she has been excited (but also nervous) to start Kindergarten for a while now. Her "first" day was so silly as it was basically an hour orientation at her enrichment class where the kids drew pictures while the teachers talked to the parents. Izzy ended up knowing a bunch of kids in her class and every time someone came in that she knew, she would stand up, give a huge wave, say their name, and beckon them to come over. It was pretty cute. 

I had thought that we would go get pedicures together and then head out to lunch but her best friend and mom said they were going to paint some pottery and go out to lunch so Izzy decided she would rather do that. We ended up having a nice time with them before we headed over to her district Kindergarten orientation. She didn't really know anyone in the class but had a good time decorating a picture frame.

It was such an odd day that I didn't end up crying or getting weepy at all. However, Izzy has been a bit weepy every night she gets home from Kindergarten. Older kid moms have told me that this is pretty normal and that it will taper off soon. She loves the fact that she gets to get on the school bus every day to travel from one school to the other and thinks that she is a super big kid now. 

I was so worried about how Wes would do at daycare once Izzy left and yet he has done great. The first week his friends happened to be in class already so they would come running up to play with him and make drop off much easier. I'm assuming the crying and clingy-ness I had with trying to drop Wes off during the summer (even when Izzy was still there) was just a phase. Some days it takes a few minutes but generally once I can get him to agree to "push" me out the door he is good to go.

So far so good for this school year.