Jingle Bells

Okay, so the guitar isn't even remotely in tune (mostly because we can't get Rory to let go of it long enough to get it done!), but luckily he could care less as long as his shoulder strap is positioned just so and his MaGyver-esque "microphone stand" is ready to go.

Now if only there was a toddler version of American Idol...

Chrismukkah 2007

My kid has got it made during this time of year - he gets to celebrate Hanukkah AND Christmas. He's been getting quite the sampling of both holidays this year, especially since he goes to a Jewish preschool. We've been lighting Hanukkah candles each night and getting to eat candies from our advent calender as we count down the days until Christmas.

This past weekend, we took him on the "North Pole Express," a special Christmas train ride that serves cookies and chocolate milk while we go to pick up Santa at the "North Pole." Since Rory is sort of a "Polar Express" junkie (we've probably watched it about 500 times in the last 12 months), he was nearly jumping out of skin with excitement. Towards the end of the train ride, Santa came through and asked all the kids what they wanted for Christmas, and of course, Rory asked for a guitar. (We're grooming the next Elvis, you know.)

Fast forward to the next night, and we're celebrating Hanukkah with my parents. Rory opens his present and sure enough, it's a GUITAR! But wait - he JUST told Santa Claus about it the night before on the train. How did it get here so fast? Hmmm...how do we explain that one? So we came up with, "Santa called your Papa that night and told him that you wanted a guitar so badly that it couldn't possibly wait until Christmas!" And I'm thinking to myself, hey, that's not too bad. This Hanukkah-Christmas mixing is a piece of cake. And Rory seems happy to accept that answer, and even says, "Sure, he called Papa - on his cell phone!" Whew, potential Chrismukkah crisis averted.



Later that night, Rory is rocking out with his new guitar on my parent's coffee table, singing his own little made up songs, and of course we're all sitting around watching him. Suddenly, he points to sky dramatically and sings,"Jesus Lives! Ya ya ya! And he plays dreidel! Ya, ya ya!"

We all burst out laughing, while my dad muttered something like "Boy, this poor kid is so confused!" But I couldn't help thinking how that summed up Chrismukkah at our house pretty darn well.

Way to go, Ro!



Happy Chrismukkah, Everybody!

Thank You , GGs!

Rory's great-grandparents sent him a saxophone playing Santa Claus yesterday and he's in love!

Thank you!

Happy Halloween!

Rory, you must think that Halloween is the most perfect holiday ever - not only do you get to go up and knock on everyone's door in the whole neighborhood and say hello, but they give you CANDY, too! Lots of it! In your world, I can't imagine that it gets any better than this!

You were definitely the cutest little cowboy in town...

The 16th Anniversary of My 16th Birthday

Happy 32nd birthday to me!

Sorry for the lack of posting... I'm making some changes in my life that should allow for more time to write, so just bear with me for now...

Don't Let The Lingo Get You Down

So I'm taking this guy's order at the Mother of All Coffee Houses and he asks for a double espresso. "Okay," I say, "one doppio coming up." I look up from writing his order on his cup and I see this strange look of anger on his face.

HIM: What did you just call me?
ME (horrified!): Oh no, sir! That's what we call a double espresso. A doppio.
HIM: A dope?
ME: No, A DOPPIO... you know, it's Italian.
HIM: Whatever.

Ugh, what a DOPPIO!

What Did He Say?

Last night Hoby and I are lying in bed talking about the days when I was pregnant and I remembered the time when I went into false labor at Target (read the story here). So Hoby says, "Oh yeah, that time when you got Rickets?" And I say, "That's BRAXTON HICKS, honey, not RICKETS."

I haven't laughed that hard in a long time.

Mariposa Weekend

(Sorry this post is a bit delayed - I wrote it but forgot to publish it...)

Recently we went up to Mariposa (a tiny little rural town outside of Yosemite) to visit with Rory's grandparents. I think these pictures pretty much sum up the trip, which was filled with BB guns, leaf blowers, and Grandma Judy's good cooking:







It may have taken Rory three days to detox from all the sugar he ate while he was there, but it was totally worth it.

Quotes from The Kid

"Hey, dinner was fun, Mom. Now, my tummy is full!"
- Rory's thoughts on our dinner at a sushi restaurant last night - thank goodness he loves it as much as we do or we might have had to trade him in for a different model.

Newsletter 2.6

Dear Rory -

Well, son, you are now officially two and a half, although sometimes I think you are more like a teenager in a toddler's body! You are so full of defiance and attitude, and it is obvious that you enjoy pushing your boundaries just to see how far you can get. I am constantly saying "No hitting, no spitting, no biting and no kicking!" to the point where you have caught on and you now think its funny to chant it and then fall down on the floor laughing. LAUGHING. AT YOUR MOTHER. Oh , the humanity! But even though you find it amusing to come up with new ways to test my patience, at least I can say that you are one creative little bugger!

The other day I was eating a diet bar for breakfast, and you, the King of Curiosity, were right in my face like you ALWAYS are when I'm eating, asking, "Whatcha eatin', Mama? Can I have some? Can I have a little bite? A little, tiny, tiny bite?" (You can now see why I find it hard to eat breakfast in the morning!) So I told you, "No, you wouldn't like this. It's grown up food. Trust me, it's yucky." (And really, kid, those diet bars, they truly ARE yucky!) A few minutes later, I went to the bathroom and left the bar on the counter. When I came back, there you were, with chocolate all over your face and your hands on your hips, and you looked at me in total defiance and said, "Mama, I TRIED it and I LIKED IT!" Every fiber of your being screamed, "Take THAT, woman!" and I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing out loud. HARD.

Speaking of laughing, have I mentioned how much I love listening to you laugh? We never know exactly what you're going to find amusing, and then all of a sudden, you'll erupt into a fit of adorable giggles. You recently started an infatuation with the t.v. show "America's Funniest Videos," and I've decided that watching you and your father sit on the couch together laughing your heads off is the perfect way to end the day.

It's rare that you are are ever sitting for more than a few minutes though, and it usually isn't long before you're either running off to the park to show off your newly acquired Big Wheel riding skills, talking someone into making you a fort or cave out of blankets, or grabbing your ever-present guitar and belting out a tune.

Add in starting preschool two days a week, attending your beloved Gymboree classes, going to Sunday School and playing with all your friends in the neighborhood and you, my friend, are one busy little dude! But I know that you love all the buzz of activity - you're so much happier when you are out socializing and keeping busy - and so far it never feels like we've taken on too much. Rambunctious children like you need ways to channel their energy without driving their mommies crazy, and trust me, nobody wants to see this mama go crazy.

But in the midst of all this running around and staying busy, I still try and find time to slow down with you and just savor the little things. Like your newfound love of brushing my hair in the morning for hours while saying, "Nice and gentle, Mama! I'm being very, very, very gentle!" Or how you run around with your camera pretending to take pictures, making me pose my hands or my feet in certain ways and then saying very seriously, "Yeah, that's a good one!" Or how you still reach out to hold my hand when I'm sitting with you in the car, which I secretly hope you'll never stop wanting to do.

We're halfway through those terrible twos which maybe aren't so terrible after all...

Love,
Mama

My Latest Brush With Stupidity...

I'm taking a woman's drink order yesterday and I ask her what size drink she'd like. "Hmmm. I don't want a small one," she says,"What other sizes do you have?" So I hold up our other two cup sizes for her to see and I say, "Medium or large?" She looks at me and says, "Well, which one's bigger?"

On the same day, while I'm working at the bar, I get a drink order for one black iced tea and one green iced tea. So I make the drinks (which are in clear plastic cups), call the guy's name, and then set the drinks on the counter for him to pick up. He walks over, looks at the drinks and asks, "Which one is the black tea?" Ummm, THE BLACK ONE.

Are people really this dumb?

My Best Friend's Wedding

This past weekend, my best friend Holley got married!

Congrats Holley and Tas!

(And thanks to Holley's brother Bruce for these awesome pictures.)

Hilton Head Vacation 2007

We just got back from our summer vacation to Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. When I tell people that, they look at me and say, "Out of all the places to visit, why would you go THERE?" Well, as a little girl living in Detroit, every other summer we would hop in the family car and drive 16 hours to Hilton Head for a two week vacation. To be honest, I have no idea why my parents started going there in the first place (or why they would drive for 16 freakin' hours in the car with two kids! Oye!), but we loved it and we kept going back. Rory is now the same age that I was when I first went to Hilton Head, and even though I haven't been there in over twenty years (God, I'm old!), very little has changed. Below is a picture of Rory sitting on the same stage that I sat on as a child - we went to see the "Singing Man" (otherwise known as Gregg Russell) who amazingly is STILL THERE singing to kids almost every night during the summer under the big oak tree. And next to the big tree is a big playground with a tree house that I spent hours in as a kid. It was like I was stepping back in time and getting show Rory some of my favorite childhood memories of summer - it was a pretty amazing experience.

We pretty much spent the majority of our vacation either at the beach or at the pool because, well, we were in the South and it was really freakin' hot! Someone joked that it was only 88 degrees, UNTIL THE SUN CAME UP. Between the actual temperature and the 80% humidity, the heat index was somewhere around 107-114 degrees EVERY DAMN DAY. Even the ocean was hot! I've never sweat so much in my life. But my father loves the beach, and there would literally have to be flames coming up off the sand before he'd skip a day at the ocean. And so we went, sweating our asses off, and amazingly we still loved it. Who needs an ass, anyways!

My son, hater of all things sandy, actually began to get over his aversion to sand during this vacation! He still needed to have his hands clean, but thankfully this year, we didn't have to have towels strategically placed all over the beach so his feet wouldn't touch the sand. Look, he even has his leg buried! What a difference a year makes, eh?

The great thing about the beach at Hilton Head was that when the tide was out early in the day, it created a shallow tide pool that had harmless little critters like hermit crabs and starfish for Rory to play with.

Unfortunately in the ocean itself, there were some other critters that weren't so harmless. Below is a picture of my knee several hours after a run-in with a jelly fish. See the tentacle marks? A week later, they are STILL THERE. Sighhhhh, I have all the luck.

Our main mode of transportation on the island was bicycles, which Rory loved, of course. He thought he was pretty hot stuff getting pulled around in his little bike cart and the bike paths were beautiful (even though I was having to continuously wipe the sweat out of my eyes to see them!):

While we were there, Rory's great grandparents, the Andersons, drove out from Florida to visit with us for a few days. And so Rory's entourage grew!

On one of the days when the temperature was well over 100 degrees, we all went to an interactive children's museum called The Sandbox, which was wonderful for Rory, but even more importantly, it was AIR CONDITIONED. Rory had the time of his life there, especially in the part that was set up like an airplane cockpit where he could push buttons, buttons and more buttons. He was in heaven! What I wouldn't give to have a room set up like this in my house! It would keep him busy for HOURS. If you know my son, it will come as no surprise that we had to drag him out of there kicking and screaming.

All in all, our vacation was wonderful. Yes, it was a bit hot (okay, maybe more than a BIT), but the scenery was beautiful and I fell in love with the south all over again. But the best part was getting to spend some quality family time with parents, grandparents and great grandparents - and getting a chance to walk down memory lane a little, too. I hope that Hilton Head will once again become a family tradition for us - I know that we can't wait to go back!

Newsletter 2.3 and 2.4

Dear Rory,
Okay, so obviously it's been a busy couple of months. So busy in fact that I missed one of your monthly newsletters and didn't even realize it! One minute it's June and then suddenly it's the middle of July and how the HELL did that happen? I've barely gotten into the swing of summer and it's half over already. Sheesh.



For the last month you've been attending "Summer Camp", which has been sort of a trial preschool run twice a week from 9am-12:30pm. We got you warmed up for your first big day by telling you for weeks that camp was a place only for YOU, not for Mommies or for Daddies - and that it was REALLY FUN, but only for YOU (see a theme here?). You seemed pretty excited about it, but I was a nervous wreck that first time I dropped you off. I thought for sure you were going to have a total melt down and that the teacher would look at me and say, "Sorry, Lady, but you're kid is just NOT ready for this." So I was totally surprised when, after a few minutes of initial hesitation, you jumped in and started exploring your new surroundings - and you barely even noticed when I left.

And how strange it was to LEAVE, walk out the door, WITHOUT YOU. I had to fight the urge to duck down behind a window and peek in at you for the rest of the morning. I forced myself to walk out of the school yard, get in my car and drive away. And let me tell you, Ro, as a mom, that's not an easy thing to do. That first day was MUCH harder on ME than it was on you.

The following weeks actually got a bit harder - the drop off at camp became a blur of crying and clinging - but I knew that you loved being there once you got over your tears, so I sucked it up, peeled you off of me, and handed you over to your counselor, even though it broke my heart into a million tiny little pieces. But I would call to check on you ten minutes after I left, and usually I could already hear you laughing in the background having the time of your life. And only then could I finally breathe again. Unfortunately camp just ended for the summer and you're already asking when you get to go back. I guess it's really time for us to start thinking seriously about preschool, eh?

Not only did you have fun at camp, but your imagination absolutely EXPLODED. Suddenly, you're playing "pretend" all the time and I just love to see what you're going to come up with next. Your favorite game right now is to pretend that something is chasing you - a bear, a crocodile, or today I think it was an owl - so you run away shrieking and laughing until you find a hiding place and then you'll pop your head out and scream "I see it! It's coming!" and the whole game starts again. We probably play this about twenty times in a row before you get sick of it, but I don't care a bit. Watching you use your imagination NEVER gets old.



And you know what else has exploded? Your ability to communicate. You finally have the ability to say whatever is on your mind and we can tell that you're enjoying your new found talent. You ALWAYS have something to say, and your father and I hang on your every word. We never know what's going to come out of your mouth. My current favorites are:

1) You rolling down your window and yelling, "Hi Gate Guy!" to the security guard at Nana and Papa's neighborhood (which sounds a lot like "Hi GAY Guy!", so we hope he doesn't hear you that well!)
2) When we yell "How you doin' Rory?" and you yell back "DOING FINE!!"
3) We had a friend stay with us for several days (Hi Wendy!) who lives in Chicago. Once she had gone home, you continued to ask "Where's Wendy", and when I'd say, "She's back in Chicago." you'd respond, "Oh, yeah! Costco! I like Costco, too!"
4) And of course the ever present, "NOOOOOO - I do it all by myself!



Ro, I have to say that you are probably at one of the coolest ages yet. We can play together, talk together, sing together and just be plain silly together. Yeah, you still have your two year old moments (enter fits and tantrums here!), but I'm enjoying our "Mama Roro" time more than ever. And I think it's only going to get better from here.

Love,
Mama

Don't give up on me yet...

I know it's been awhile since I've posted, but things have been more hectic around here than usual - seven people quit at my work in one week (yes, SEVEN!) so we've all had to pick up extra hours, I've been helping with a bridal shower and an upcoming wedding (ie, invitations for both, favors, etc.), and, well, I have a TWO YEAR OLD. That alone is a big enough excuse :)

But there WILL be a newsletter coming just as soon as I can catch my breath.

I promise.

The Big Plop

For those of you who are a bit squeamish about bodily functions, you may want to skip this blog post...

Rory actually pooped on the potty for the very first time today! Hurray! We went on a little field trip with some friends of his today and all of them were in varying stages of potty training, so I thought that a little peer pressure might work wonders. So later in the day, when I noticed he was doing "The Lean" as we like to call it, I grabbed him and threw him on ended up bribing him with a lollipop, but I figured if I could just get him to do it once, it would "break the ice" so to speak and lead the way to future successes (which is really just a fancy way of rationalizing my use of parental bribery - which worked, HAHAHA!- so criticizers be damned!) Rory was so excited when he heard that "PLOP!" sound in toilet that he immediately jumped off the pot to look at his handy work. Then he refused to flush beause he wanted to make sure that his Daddy got a chance to see his first big poop in the potty - and we all know how things like that can make a father proud!

So congratulations, Ro, on your first Big Plop! May there be many more!

Generation Gap

I was at the park the other day and I saw a group of young kids hanging out who were probably all around eight or nine years old. A parent walked over to get his daughter, and as they were walking away together, we all overheard one of the kids in the group say, "Yeah, I've got my razor with me!" The dad whipped his head around in alarm and says, "WHAT did he just say?" and the little girl looks up at her father, rolls her eyes and says, "Dad, he's talking about a PHONE. Duh."

Down on the Farm

This past weekend we went to the Underwood Family Farms in Simi Valley and Rory LOVED it. He rode a pony, climbed a pyramid made of hay bales, cruised around in a little John Deere tractor, and then got pulled around the farm in a cool cow train. It was AWESOME. We'll definitely be heading back there again soon.

Newsletter 2.2

Dear Rory,

Okay, let's be honest. For once in my life, I'm having a terrible case of writer's block. I've been trying to write your latest newsletter for three days and I just can't seem to do it. There's a lot that I could talk about this month, but unfortunately, I'm not feeling very clever or witty - I'm just feeling wrung out and tired. Some of that is due to all the hours I've been working lately, but most of it is because I have a fiercely defiant two year old living in my house that seems to thrive off testing my patience. If we want you to take a bath, you scream that you don't want to, then once you're in the bath, we can't get you to come out. You refuse to get your clothes on in the morning, then later you won't take them off. You don't want to have your diaper changed, your teeth brushed, or your socks put on, and you most certainly don't want to sit down to eat dinner. You won't go upstairs, you won't come downstairs, you want soy milk, then you want apple juice instead. You can be perfectly content playing and then suddenly you're frustrated and in tears. And ALL of this can happen within the span of FIVE MINUTES. You're wearing me out, kid.

There's also so much you're DOING lately - everyday there's something new that I want to remember to write down, but this list is getting so long that I couldn't possibly put it all in this blog. So how do I choose what to write about? Do I talk about how you've suddenly started jumping off EVERYTHING, just because you can? Or how when you ask us questions, you listen to the answer and then nod and say "Oh!", like you totally understand our explanation? Or how you've taken to crossing your arms in front of you when you're thinking because you saw your papa doing it? And how could I not mention your tendency to throw a tantrum whenever I try to do something that doesn't put you at the utmost center of my attention? Oh, how the list could go on and on.



Or perhaps I should just talk about your amazing vocabulary that continues to multiply by the minute. Sometimes it actually freaks me out that you can not only say phrases, but use them in the correct context, like when you say, "Duck your head, Mama" as I try and cram myself into your playhouse, or how you like to yell, "Thank you!" to cars when they stop to let us cross the street. Or like yesterday when you asked where your friend Mikey was, and when I answered that he wasn't home, you shrugged your shoulders and told me, "Yeah, he's probably at preschool." I mean, we're practically having coherent CONVERSATIONS, for goodness sake! Of course, that also means that you're getting good at trying to manipulate us, like when we're trying to get you to do something you don't want to, and you suddenly tell us that you "have to go to potty now" because you know we'll drop everything to rush you to the nearest toilet. Works every time, too, you sneaky little devil.

Although we've got our hands full with just you alone, we've also had plenty of other things going on around here. This month's activities kicked off with a visit from your great-grandfather. Your "GG Pop," as you call him, is still able to travel by himself all the way from Florida, even though he's 95 years old, which is pretty damn impressive. Unfortunately, he broke his hearing aide right before he came to visit, which made communicating a wee bit difficult for everyone, but somehow the two of you managed to get along just fine. You loved how loud he was, and he couldn't hear how loud you were, so it worked out perfectly. And I know it meant a lot to your Papa to see the two of you laughing together.





Another big thing that we did this month was go to the Santa Barbara Zoo on the train with both your grandparents and your best buddies, the twins Yash and Neil from across the street. You had all of your favorite people in one place AND you got to ride a train - talk about Nirvana for a two year old! And there was no doubt that you loved every minute of it. Your smile was so big when that train pulled into the station - it made watching the "Polar Express" movie 5 trillion times totally worth it. It was definitely one of our best Saturdays ever.





Probably one of the only things better than seeing you smile is hearing you laugh. Have I mentioned lately how much I LOVE your laugh? That sound is one of the best sounds in the whole world. It's so cool to watch as your developing your own sense of humor, and I get a big kick out of seeing what makes you laugh. The most random things on a TV commercial or in an episode of Dora can leave you rolling on the floor in a fit of giggles and I almost want to cry sometimes because it makes me so darn happy. It's moments like those that I can forget about all the whining, the tantrums, and the tears, and I just revel in how amazing you are. And I actually start thinking that maybe, just maybe, you might like a little brother or a sister to laugh with you...

Love,
Mama

Finding New Ways to Keep the Kid Busy

Wow, that was hard work!