Mama Mama Quite Contrary

We are!  Jude and Elie turned 3 on March 6th and it was a much anticipated event.  We had cake. We had hats. We had a little party at the Y with all their favorite grown-up friends.  (Let's face it.  These kids don't have friends their age.) Because there was not one thing these kids wanted other than strawberries and blueberries, it was easy to make them happy.  Vivi gave them a bucket and bubbles and I made photo books for each of them.  My little narcissists loved them.  (We'll just keep the fact that I couldn't tell who was who in some of the baby pictures our little secret.)  Of course, you can't turn three and NOT have something fancy to wear.  So Aunt Katie came to the rescue by sending these new swim suits. Mother Nature also celebrated our survival of three years with three kids by sending some beautiful weather our way. So we made like The Brady Bunch and "fixed" our bikes. Hard work isn't really Jude's thing and this is how...

Am I the only one who thinks the holidays come and go in one big blur?  It seems like it was just the beginning of December and we were all worked up about choosing our tree.   My husband had the brilliant idea that we should tag a tree after Thanksgiving before all the good ones are scooped up.  (Apparently our Charlie Brown trees of yore were haunting my poor Jewish spouse.)  Well, he and the girls did a good job this year.  Take a look: I also spent a fair amount of time at the sewing machine this December.  I made those big cushions on the left hand side of the tree-- complete with piping.  (That's unchartered territory for me!)  Jude and Elie love them and, as I suspected, they work beautifully for story time or as implements of destruction. Speaking of Jude and Elie, they had quite an accidental meeting with "Santa Claus" in the YMCA parking lot a few weeks ago.  There is an older man who works out when I do.  He has long white...

Hello Internet!  I am back from the abyss of home improvement, rainy days, my cleanse, various outings and disasters, as well as Vivi's last day of nursery school.  I survived it all and now we have this fancy thing on which I can relax: Of course, I am not the only one who uses our new deck.  How could you not spend a lot of time out there when you have a twin sister and conjoined adirondack chairs? And snacks.  Must not forget the snacks. It wasn't long after the deck was finished and the rain broke, that my husband decided we needed a little family outing.  So we drove to southern Rhode Island, slapped some numbers on our kids, enticed them with Pirate's Booty (or "Judy Moody" as Ellie calls it), and told them to run their little hearts out.   Which they did for a half mile.  Well, Jude and Vivi did.  Ellie stayed at the starting line with her snacks.  Are you sensing a theme here? "I'm taking you down, Mama."   Vivi did gr...

Ladies, I am doing something that I never ever thought I would do: a cleanse.  Yes, in a moment of bloated flabbiness, I signed up for this .  I am off dairy, gluten, all processed food including tofu, and sugar for ten days.  As a vegetarian, I'm also not eating meat so it's been a lot of almond butter, avocado, hummus, and kale around these parts. And, well, it hasn't been terrible.  The first couple days I felt more tired than I have felt in a very long time.  I think it was because I had to sever my relationship with sugar.  (I was sorry to have to break-up with my BFF but her time had come. She's been treating me badly for so long that I just couldn't keep pretending our problems didn't exist.) The most challenging part of this week is not the cleanse, however.  It is this: We hired someone to paint our foyer, stairwell, and upstairs hallway.  We are on day 5!   FIVE!  I have been out of the house from 8 a.m. until 4 p.m. ...

The first warm sunny day around here is an important day.  That's when Daddy empties the compost bin and all his helpers get to work. At some point during this process, a certain someone felt the need to remove her pants. Don't worry Daddy, I'll take care of this.   Smoothie in the sunshine = Toddler Bliss! Linking up to Simply Modern Mom's Glimpse Into Mootherhood .

Several posts ago, I mentioned that I was working on a felt play mat for Vivi's nursery school's silent auction.  This is an annual fundraiser for her small co-operative school and each family is responsible for submitting two donations.  They can be handmade items or things you solicit from local businesses.  Because I am a glutton for punishment  crafty gal, I decided I was going to go handmade. Big Mistake. You may recall that I said I liked doing something like this in the evening after the kiddos are in bed.  Yeah, that feeling lasted about three days. After that, this project (combined with my perfectionism) became the bane of my existence.  Nonetheless, I got the sucker finished after about 25+ hours of work.  Now let's hope it brings in more than $10 otherwise I am setting my felt collection on fire. Hell, I just might do that anyway. The finished product Have I mentioned my girls are obsessed with car washes?  That's how this ...

As noted in a recent post, I've been bogged down by sickness.  Not my own, of course, but by that of my family.  I am sure that I will get sick as soon as we hop on the plane for San Francisco tomorrow.  Our first family vacation since the Turtles were born is no doubt a good time for the dreaded stomach bug to come and bite me in the ass. Normally, I am not such a pessimist but given all the illness that surrounds me and our lack of decent options for school (we won no charter school lottery), I am feeling like I am living a little less on the bright side these days. Since it is Friday, it is also time to report what I have done for my me time .  Well, there isn't much to report.  I realized this morning that I have not been to the Y all week, haven't prepared one decent meal, and the last time I showered was Monday.  (The dry brushing felt great, however!)  I gross myself out sometimes. The upshot of my week was that once all the sickies were in b...

With Vivi at camp and the babies napping in the mornings, I've recently become reacquainted with my sewing machine.  I tend to do most of my crafting in the cooler months when night seems longer than day but lately I've gotten my hands on some fun fabric and a few neat ideas.  Plus, as I mentioned in the beginning of the year, I'm trying my hand at making as many gifts as possible.  Trying is the operative word here folks. In the past month, I've made a chef's hat, a sundress for Vivi, a fabric party hat, my own (pathetic) version of a fabric trapper keeper (remember those?) and more than a few embellished headbands.  Of course, it did not occur to me to photograph any of these items but I'm turning over a new leaf.  Here are photos of some plain tank tops that I gussied up for Vivi's friend Charlotte's birthday party last week: Lucky for me they only involved minimal swearing and were a total hit with Charlotte. Currently, I am in the m...

Vivi is our little multimedia artist.  The child is not content with just crayons and paper.  Oh no!  Every project must involve glue, glitter, stickers, or any other random scrap of something we have lying around.  Her philosophy is the more, the better.   To ease our daily craft routine, I've compiled all of our various art supplies in one rubbermaid container which she has dubbed the "arts and crafts box."  The box sits on a low shelf in my office and she is free to take it and use it as she wishes.  There are just a couple of rules.  One is that she must do her art at the table.  The second is that she  must put everything back in the box and return the box to the shelf when she is finished.  Simple enough, right?  It has been... until this morning.  That's when we discovered this work of art sitting on the kitchen table: So long sippy cups.  Bye-bye big kid scissors.   Hey, at least the a...

About two months ago, I promised to post pictures of the Turtles' new bedroom.  I never quite got around to it because I never felt like the room was done.  The babies were sleeping in there but it took a bit of time for me to decide on a rug and make the curtains.  Once that was done, I needed something for the walls.  I discovered some lovely prints from  Art and Philanthropy  but couldn't justify buying them (despite the philanthropic bent) after we'd spent so much on the damn renovation project. Alas, ask and you shall receive.  My mother got the alphabet and number prints for the Turtles for Christmas and, one month later, I finally got them on the walls.  If you need a reminder of how the room looked before, you can click here .  This is their room now: Vivi putting Ellie in a headlock while Jude smiles is typical of the wild shenanigans that happen in this room.  Now on to other projects.