Hello! How was everybody's Thanksgiving? Did y'all trample anybody over an Xbox? (Are Xboxes still a thing? I don't know what the thing is this year. Because all my children are getting is the Xbox we already own, that Ezra broke as a toddler by feeding it Legos. Jason figured out how to fix it, so TA DA! Here's your Christmas miracle, kids.) (The boys all really, really want an Xbox, but I keep saying NO XBOX because I'm a mom who hates fun and plus you guys broke the last one. I am still saying NO XBOX even now, to their great collective distress because it's ALL THEY WANT FROM SANTA, because I'm ALSO a mom with a video camera who wants an epic reaction on Christmas morning, mwa ha ha.) (I am also a mom with an upper respiratory infection and goddamn bonus pinkeye right now. This has nothing to do with anything else in this post, but it feels wrong not to mention in because I'm whiny and sad and leaking out of way too many parts of my face right now.) In honor of Cyber Monday and literally everybody on the planet telling you where to... Read more →

I've been trying to talk Ike into a "real" haircut for awhile now (YES IT'S TRUE OH YE HATERZ OF TEH HAIRZ), but he's staunchly and solidly refused. The long blond hair is part of his identity and self-image now, so even when he's allowed me to trim his bangs and mayyyyybe take a little length off, I have to repeatedly promise that I won't cut the "long thing over his ears." Otherwise he won't "look like Ike." He watches everything I do in the mirror and demands that I show him what I've cut off the back, just in case I'm trying to go rogue. I've created a monster. The thing is, I'm lousy at home haircuts, especially now that Ike's forgiving curls aren't around to mask my uneven trims. I'm so afraid of messing something up I end up barely taking any length off, and layers? Angles? Wut? Is this math? We took Noah and Ezra for haircuts this weekend, and stopped for lunch at a restaurant first. As Ike was heading to the table -- dressed in head to toe blue, wearing his light-up Captain America shoes and a Superman shirt with a cape -- a waiter... Read more →

We threw a party! This is the only picture we took, the next morning: Okay wait I took this one too: In the lower right corner you can see our second, back-up recycling bin, similarly overflowing with bottles. Good show, friends, jolly good show. We were not partying with Guns N' Roses, pinky swear, but did manage to pack over 50 people into our house, most of whom were jam-packed into the new kitchen because we need to revisit our food/booze party flow mapping. But all in all, I think it went well! This was the biggest party we've ever attempted, and also our first Friendsgiving potluck. The turkeys came out delicious, everybody brought amazing apps/sides/desserts, kids and adults alike all seemed to have fun. I was a slightly nervous twitchy wreck about the party all month, but after we finished cleaning up on Sunday I asked Jason when we could throw ANOTHER party, because that was fun, but he just kind of stared at me silently for awhile and then took a nap on the couch. ...the couch right by our new COFFEE TABLE! Yayyyyyy. Wheeeee. Of course, now that the table is there it basically changes EVERYTHING and... Read more →

Hey remember all those damn pallets? It's okay if you don't. I practically forgot about them too until this week and I walked by them every single day, so thoroughly resigned to their continued existence that they ceased to register in my brain at all. But then stuff started happening! Cutting stuff! Staining stuff! COFFEE TABLE STUFF! And...well. That's actually as far as stuff has gone, because the hairpin legs we ordered haven't arrived yet. Today, hopefully. Because tomorrow we are hosting a huge-ass Friendsgiving/housewarming party and invited way, way too many people because we figured only half of them liked us enough to trek out to the new far-flung 'burbs but then almost everybody said they could come and gaaahhhh omg I don't have enough chairs or bowls or coffee tables. We should have enough turkey, though. I picked up two hefty-sized birds from a local farm yesterday which are currently brining away in coolers. The smaller one is getting deep fried, because I'm starting to suspect that moving to this house was all just a ploy to give Jason an excuse to buy himself toys like tile saws and Dremmels and deep fryers. (Although I mainly moved here... Read more →

I called our county's Child Find office on Monday and requested an assessment packet for Ike. (Or technically for "Isaac," a name I only ever hear called out in doctors' waiting rooms, and I usually sit there for a few extra seconds like "Why are they looking at me? Who's Isaac? Oh, right.") So now all that's left on that front is to wait for the packet to arrive in the mail, fill out all the parent forms, send teacher forms to his school, wait for his teachers to return the forms, mail everything back, wait for a phone call to schedule an appointment, wait for said appointment, perform some ancient sensory ceremonial rituals involving obstacle courses and small toys hidden in shaving cream, and then maybe...MAYBE...we'll get some speech therapy before his fifth birthday in June, at which point he gets handed over to the school district and whole process starts all over again. (Do I sound chill or just jaded? I can't tell the difference anymore.) After I made the call, I decided our chalkboard wall needed a new family motto. Vinyl decal from Etsy, found here. NERD TIME: As a copywriter I have to quibble with the... Read more →

This post is sponsored by Blue Apron. We skipped three straight weeks of Blue Apron during the kitchen remodel. We didn't want to, especially since each of those weeks would've included at least one of our all-time favorite meals from last year, plus something new that we were dyyyyyyying to try. (Queso and pepper arepas, anyone?) But, you know. NO KITCHEN. We took a couple weak stabs at using the grill, but even that only worked if the meal required little to no prep work, which we were doing on the dining room table, surrounded by clutter and construction dust. Dirty dishes piled up in the bathroom, I rinsed cutting boards off in the bathtub upstairs, and all the drains were getting clogged by even the most minuscule bits of food. We started eating out or getting delivery, or buying whatever packaged/pre-prepared food options we could find most nights instead. The results: Immediate and somewhat drastic weight gain for both me and Jason (I jumped close to seven pounds over my goal/ideal weight). AND OH MY LANDS MY CHILDREN LIVED ON NOTHING BUT PIZZA. To the point where if we dared go to a restaurant that didn't have pizza, they'd... Read more →

Well. I don't know what to say. Are you okay? I hope everybody is okay. *deep, weary sigh* Moving back around to my little myopic world, Ike attended a classmate's birthday party at a local gymnastics place with Jason. About an hour in he sent me the following: Goddamn birthday parties. What the hell is your problem with my kids? This was not a completely out-of-the-blue suggestion, by the way, but a nagging worry we've both had and been rationalizing away for a bit too long. Ike is not Noah, he is not Ezra, and developmentally he's always fallen somewhere in between his brothers' respective paces. But lately we're seeing more and more overlap with some of Noah's more...quirky little developmental hiccups. His vocabulary is solid but his pronunciation is poor and his grammar lags far behind his peers. He swaps words in ways that aren't wrong, but aren't necessarily correct either (i.e. "up" instead of "top"), and has trouble using more specific descriptive words so he defaults to the more general one ("arms" when he really means "fingers"). And these are all words/concepts he knows! He just seems to be physically struggling to pull the words up and out,... Read more →

So not long after hitting the publish button on Wednesday, the plague swiftly moved onto both Ike and I, which was swell. And entirely predictable. It had just occurred to me that the tired-grumpy-headachey-soreness state I was in was probably illness-related, and on my way to find the thermometer I bumped into Ike, who informed me that he had a cold. In his neck. Also this part, the forehead part of his face. We both had fevers, so we spent a cozy little sick day together. Ike hauled every book off the bookshelves one by one to his bed, where he buried himself in stuffed animals and honestly didn't complain all that much. While I stayed in my bed, literally accomplishing nothing but whining to people over text message while watching Missy Elliott's new video on an endless repeat, be still my 90s girl heart. (Scurries off to watch it again. Yep, everybody go home, my life is complete, let's just shut 2015 down already.) Still not feeling 100% myself yet, but determined to get a little bit more done today, like...taking a shower! Writing some words! Then possibly microwaving some soup. It's gonna be a big day, for sure.... Read more →

Ah, November. The leaves are dropping, the weather's all over the place (40 degrees! No, 60 ! Sun! Rain! More rain! Here's some wind! Now get those shorts back out cuz it's going up to 80 for some reason!)...and of course, everybody's sick. We're passing around a mostly symptom-less fever thing right now, most likely the flu because I lost the consent forms for them to get vaccinated at school and then the Target flu clinic was out of the mist when we went and then the next day Ezra complained of a headache and went to bed for three days. Then he was fine and Noah suddenly wasn't. (Go get ur flu shots ppl it's real and it's happening and it's COMING FOR YOU.) I feel fine so far, unless you count the fact that I am horribly, violently allergic to the ENTIRE WORLD UP HERE. Since we moved, my previously mild seasonal allergies are now like, major and not very seasonal, since I was allergic to everything in the summer and now it's fall and I'm still sneezing my head off. If I keep a constant, steady dose of allergy meds in my body I'm okay. Not great,... Read more →

The tile backsplash was installed almost entirely without incident. I KNOW RIGHT? I believe this is a direct result of me not really helping, other than providing Jason with rags occasionally and then getting the hell out of his way. And now the kitchen is done, mostly on schedule and well under budget, thanks to some nice Angie's List discounts, the seriously marked-down floor tile, and us sticking to our DIY guns on the painting and tile work. (Also plain white subway tile is seriously inexpensive. It's like the manufacturers haven't figured out that plain white subway tile is practically the new mason jar on Pinterest right now.) (Also also, black triangle thingies are vintage glass planters I got on Etsy. Top one holds our corkscrew and other small wine accessories and the bottom one catches the caps from the beer bottle opener in between. These were ABSOLUTELY the first order of hanging-up business once we painted.) Okay, I fibbed. We're installing some under cabinet lighting soon-ish and that lamp above the sink is still up for debate. I love it but it's too bright and hangs too close to eye level for Jason. I vote dimmer switch but he's... Read more →