all the things.

emme has been sick this whole week. like, today is thursday and she's had fever since sunday (saturday night) sick. i brought her to the doctor on monday and they did a urine culture and a throat culture. throat was negative, but urine looked like it might be something, so they started her on an antibiotic and then sent the culture to a lab. today, four doses of a (strong) antibiotic in, i get the call that her culture came back negative. cease the antibiotic. fortunately, she's not running fever anymore and appears to be much better. so, something viral, they guess. but i am, as always, amazed at how the medical system works - or doesn't. it's not that i'm not grateful for our access to advanced medicine and all that. it's that i'm so frustrated with the whole thing...how i've felt guilty all week - trying to work half-ass while taking care of her; putting her in front of countless hours of tv and movies because i don't want her to overheat and she's weak and low energy anyway; that doctors are so quick to just stick them on drugs (reeeaaallllly expensive drugs - the 'script she's on would have been $700 if we didn't have insurance) for anything or nothing, and then she ends up NOT EVEN NEEDING them?! anyway. i'm calming down. i am really grateful that our kidlets hardly ever get sick because i don't handle it well at all.

before all this went down, we had a really fun weekend. some friends came over saturday night and the kids had a blast and stayed up too late having a living room dance party. lots of food and every toy in our house was out and scattered - the sign of a great time, i'd say.

last weekend, my parents came to town kind of last minute since we didn't have a definitive plan for our next hangout, and it was awesome. we didn't have any agenda (so rare for our clan) and just played and cooked and hung with the kids. we even rocked an adult crazy eights marathon. my mom was victorious, with jb in second place. i think this is the first time since his induction in our family that he hasn't come in dead last.

jb also got our chair back, but that's a post for another day.

driving.

hollis is insistent about getting himself into the car these days. as in, if i don't let him do it himself, he goes into an intense rage and flings his body around like i'm trying to put him into a furnace of some sort.

it also takes him like 10 minutes (or more) to climb up, play with all the buttons, pick out his books, etc, so the other day i made sure he was almost in then ran back inside to grab the rest of all the things that i schlep everywhere (water bottles, work bag, purse, workout bag, kids lunches, my lunch, extra clothes, diapers - seriously i need a sidecar for our gear it seems). when i came back out, he had somehow managed to hop the console and land in the drivers seat. he was extremely pleased with himself and extremely displeased with me when i "helped" him move his body to the back.

33.

pretty much every day my brain chronicles all the things i want to be doing/improving. but i never really write any of it down, so it's mostly just my own battle with myself of ways i want to be better and ways i'm falling short.

one of the basic (and, honestly, annoying) things they teach us in business school, early on, is about goal setting. and one of the models of how to set goals is to set SMART goals - specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, time-bound. so, you can't just say "i am going to grow revenue in FY15", you have to say "i'm going to grow revenue by 15% by Q3 of FY15 because i've calculated these projections and feel like with x and y plan, this is an attainable stretch goal". or whatever. better life example would be "i'm going to run a half marathon in january with a training program that starts this week".

so. i thought for my 33rd birthday i would set some goals. and write them down to add accountability. not all of them are SMART goals, but i've tried to make them as smart as possible. ha. in no particular order:

1. take better care of my skin. specifically: drink 2-4 quarts of water every day; wash face and apply moisturizer and eye cream every night; use sunscreen daily; moisturize arms and legs after shower. 
2. spend more time outside. specifically: take dogs for walk or run 4 days/week; get outside while at the office - eat lunch outside, away from my desk/computer, do walking meetings, take 10 minutes to do a lap around the building once or twice a day; eat dinner and/or breakfast on the porch with the kids. 
3. be more intentional about what i eat: specifically: meal plan and stick to it; prep lunches and bulk stuff on sundays; bring lunch a minimum of 3 days/week; eat at home on friday evenings; eat breakfast; throw cash saved by not eating out into a box; involve kids in meal prep even more.
4. do stuff in the evenings. specifically: don't just lay on the couch after the kids go to bed; pick a project each week and work on it a little bit every evening; make more social commitments; take turns with jb to run when it cools down a little.
5. exercise (more/consistently): weight training twice a week; running 4 times per week. no excuses.
6. be a better friend/communicator: write letters; send packages; make time for people; don't just rely on facebook and instagram lurking to know what people are up to. 
7. take pictures: lots of pictures. learn how to use one of the DSLRs. in manual. before halloween. 
8. be a better wife: plan dates. have a consistent babysitting night (start with one/month). do little nice things to show love. 
9. spend one on one time with each kidlet: 3-4 days each week. 15-20 minutes. go on a walk with just one of them, or work on a little project with just ek. get on the floor with hollis and play with his trucks. let one of them "own" dinner prep with me. 
10. read more (non-YA) novels: YA novels are great, but let's have a one for one relationship - one cheesy teen novel for one piece of real literature. maybe join a bookclub? 

whew. let the games begin!

craziness.

ek, shuffling three babies and a book on her lap while i'm trying to buckle her into her car seat: "mommy, can you hold some of my craziness for a minute?"

hollis.

just a couple pictures of hollis from the last week or so. he is killing me right now. such a funny kid - so much personality. so stubborn and opinionated. emme decided recently that this awkward old hamper we have was her "crown", so it floats around the house, usually on her head. well, if it's going on emme's head, you better believe hollis wants it on his head too. after bath the other night, he decided just having it on his head wasn't enough - he needed to be IN the hamper. he was very proud of himself.

three injuries and a birthday weekend.

i turned 33 this weekend. whee! so far it doesn't feel any different, though i have lots i want to do in my 34th year.

we had a fun weekend. after picking up the kidlets on friday, i took them and the pups for a walk to the park. justin stayed home as he was feeling sub-par (mostly thanks to a late night out on thursday), but it was shockingly nice out, so the rest of us went. there was no one at the park, so the kids got to romp in the shade and the pups got to roll around while i snapped a few photos for instatram.

after the park, the kids and i made chicken salad out of some chicken i had done in the crockpot earlier. it turned out super tasty and they ate outside on the porch. friday night wendy came by to drop off a present and have a quick visit, so that was a fun unexpected surprise.

saturday morning we woke up and went to 24 for breakfast, which i'd been wanting to try for years. it was good (overpriced, but yummy), but the kidlets were wild! mainly hollis. we don't usually have too much trouble with them in restaurants, but he was a maniac for some reason. it ended up fine - a little stressful, but fun nonetheless. afterwards, we came home and played on the porch/in the backyard for a bit. this is where injury #1 occurred: emme kicked hollis in the face/body because he was "in the way" where she wanted to swing. um, no. he got a little shiner and was super upset about it (as were the rest of us). fortunately, it's healing quickly and it hasn't slowed him down at all.

the kiddos went down for nap and i headed off. my friends jenny, shaina and sara met me for a pedicure and then jb had booked a massage for me, so i had some delightful pampering.

i got home and we did another little park endeavor with kids and dogs. hollis had had a bout of diarrhea while i was gone, but seemed ok so we went. well, he had another mini-episode at the park and he was NOT ok with it. he was crying and writhing and wouldn't sit on his bottom, so we sped home with him hanging his head/bottom out of the wagon and wailing. it was pitiful but kind of comical. i'm sure it didn't feel great, but i am convinced boys have a lower pain threshold than girls.

after getting them changed, bathed, fed, and down, jb and i enjoyed some wine and cheese on the back porch while he made me dinner. ny strips, asparagus, baked potatoes on the grill, and mushrooms sauteed in butter and red wine. yes please. all in all a great day.

sunday is where the second two injuries came into the picture. first, i was cleaning out/reorganizing my craft desk (loooong overdue project) and i dropped one of the super heavy drawers on my foot. bleeding, bruising, swelling all ensued, but i will keep my foot and i don't think anything is broken - ha. sunday evening we met up with the perques at waterloo for some dinner and kid play time. emme loved the playground and sandbox, but at whatever point she was near the building playing and holding the door open for people. well, she smashed her right pinkie in the door near the hinges (OUCH) and i could tell it really really hurt her. it looked ok but swollen, but was still pretty rough looking monday morning and she was still complaining about it. we brought her in yesterday afternoon and then took her for an x-ray upon the NP's guidance. it was especially hard to tell, they said, since it was a crush injury. anyway - x-rays came back and everything was fine, thankfully. they wanted to confirm that she didn't damage her growth plate and we figured better safe than sorry for sure. only justin escaped the weekend unscathed!

other things.

i started a new job this week. still at my same company, but doing something new and interesting that i'm pretty excited about. i'm trying to be more appreciative of the fact that i have a job (since i need one) and what this job/company offer me. it's really easy to think about what you don't have/don't get/limitations/etc., but the truth is that i have a pretty cushy situation and it's important to acknowledge and be grateful for that.

i'm turning 33 on saturday. i always look at birthdays like new years - what changes do i want to make in my life? in myself? how can i be better at embracing and fully living this beautiful little life of mine? i want to make a specific list this year. i need to work on that.

it's getting hot in austin. finally. haha. we've had such an incredibly mild summer, and now we're finally baking by the afternoon. hoping to not lose all momentum with running and the yard and all the other outdoor things. but so far i've been much lazier than i want to be because the heat and dryness really zap me by the end of the day. sigh.

hollis is trying to jump lately and it's my favorite thing. he crouches down and says "jump!" and then stands up fast and usually ends up toppling to the ground. we captured a little of it on video the other night and i die at how cute he is.

we got emme a princess treasury book when we were at half-priced books the other day. i'm avidly anti-princess, but i also know that her obsession with princess-ness will not wane with me being a jerk about how much she loves them. so this book is like 200 pages with 30 or so different stories that are a few pages each. every night we read one or two stories and she just loves to absorb them and then set the book aside, opened to the page we're going to read the next night. i love how much my kids love books.

justin went to a 311 concert this week, fulfilling all his high school dreams. we are wrapping up swimming lessons (this session at least) today. our tenants move out of our rental tomorrow and new tenants move in next week. we picked up a massive fishtank on the side of the road on sunday and have mostly decided it's not a project we want to tackle right now. there are lots of things i want to be doing, but i've been spending most of my evenings reading YA fiction and dozing on the couch. someone motivate me!

school update.

for those of you following along at home (and for my mental clarity), we are in the fourth week at the kids' new school.

i am mostly tired of thinking about it and talking about it and lamenting it. i want it to be an easy, obvious situation, but it's not.

with emme: she is actually doing really well. her confidence level is vastly improved over what it was in cardinals at her old school. she is kinda/sorta making friends. the class size is small (8 or 10 kids), which is working really nicely for her. her teacher is sweet and nurturing and loving. i don't love that they watch tv 10-20 minutes a day, or that they eat refined sugar and have pizza days every week or so, or that they color in disney coloring books, or that they use sippy cups. but i love that they take pictures and send them to parents and that emme is mostly excited/glad to go to school and that she is engaged and pleased with what she's doing there. she is also learning some academic stuff (planets, parts of plants, that kind of thing), which is fun but maybe not quite as important to me as, say, grace and courtesy. but, if i had to stack rank it, i would say she's thriving here in a way she wasn't necessarily doing at the old school.

with hollis: different story. they tell me (every day) that he stops crying after i leave and does great for the rest of the day. but, he gets upset just seeing the building as we pull into the parking lot. he definitely cried during drop off at our last school, but it was mostly crying because i was leaving, whereas this feels like crying because we're there, ya know? i've picked up on a couple of different days where the little toddlers were eating Flav-R-Ice on the playground. there is a tv in his classroom. the books and work on the shelves are in opaque bins - not really accessible by curious kidlets. they change his diaper once or twice in the whole day. and his teacher is just not nurturing at all. she took him from my arms yesterday by holding him by the forearms and moving his body to the floor. i know they're not hurting him or doing anything wrong at ALL, it's just not the environment i want for him. it feels like a baseline of care rather than something wonderful.

i'm still second-guessing myself and wondering if i'm just crazy, especially since i've talked to numerous other parents whose kids go there/have gone there and there has been unanimous support and affection for the school. so i know it's not like it's really terrible. it's just also not what i thought it was. but i still don't feel like we have any great alternatives readily available, and i am not really sure what to do.

swimming lessons.

we signed emme up for swimming lessons at this place in our neighborhood with a small indoor pool and small class sizes. small seems to be the key for emme kay because she is doing GREAT.

the class is M-Th this week and next week - eight classes total, for a kind of intensive swimming experience. she's in a class with four other kids and miss sarah is her teacher. she loooooves miss sarah and at the end of week one is even putting her face in the water a little bit. big win for this girl.

we're hoping to hit the pool a couple times this weekend because both kidlets are really into the water these days.

hollis at 18 months.

my baby turned one and a half on the fourth of july, but i wanted to do a little photo shoot of him separate from the festivities, so justin brought him outside for a few minutes this morning and snagged some shots.

this kid is too much right now. he is hilarious and busy and an absolute joy. he is obsessed with emme - most mornings, she is the first person he asks for when he wakes up (right after nursing, of course). when i pick him up from school, he sees me then immediately starts pointing in the direction of her classroom and saying her name. he also loves his dogs and can often be found with his head and arms around one of their backs. he's into trucks and balls and trains and bugs - all that fun boy stuff - and it cracks me up to hear him in random parts of the house "vroom"ing his cars on whatever he can find that makes the most noise (the a/c grate is a favorite). he loves to brush his teeth and be outside especially in water at any possible occasion.

he is trying to run on his squat little chublet legs and is a huge fan of our family dance parties. he can be a little mimic, especially with ek, and his version of whatever any of us are doing is always super charming. he's picking up what seems like 3 words a day right now and i have lost track of how many words he says now. he knows most animals (certainly by sound, but most by name too), his body parts, his family members, truck, boat, tractor, airplane, pick a vehicle, really. he is also starting to string a couple words together, although mostly his sentences are "bye bye ______". his first sentence, several weeks ago now, was "bye bye turtle" and this has expanded into bye bye boat, bye bye diaper, bye bye dada, etc etc. he also does the typical stuff like mama up! and that kind of thing.

i brought him to the pediatrician on the 9th and his measurements were the following:
height: 31.5" - 25%
weight: 25.5lbs - 40%

apparently they don't measure their heads at the 18 month appointment anymore, but i am fairly sure he's still rocking 99% on that front. love my short, scrawny, big-headed children.

hollis is much pickier than emme was at this age, but is still a decent eater. i'm still nursing him and he would probably want to do that much more frequently, but i mostly limit it to twice a day. his favorite foods are toast, 'nana, and french fries. my, how things change with the second child! he's also pretty good about eating protein most of the time - chicken, ground meat, cheese, eggs, some fish. he loves berries and plums and cherries. veggies are tough with him these days, and he is not one to try something he's never seen before. he'll eat carrots and sweet potatoes, but i would love it if he would deign to eat a green vegetable ever. he is also super picky about sweets - case in point the fourth of july ice cream and a recent brownie incident that enraged him. ha.

sleep is getting better, though still not consistently wonderful. we moved him to a floor bed (finally), which i will totally do from day one if we have a third child. i have a pool noodle under the crib sheet on either side of his mattress, so he's all snug and secure, and he loves being able to get into and out of his bed by himself. he's making it until 5:30 or 6 most nights, sometimes even later. and on nights when he's up in the 4s, he will usually go back down once he's in bed with us. it's not a great habit, but at least we all get a couple more hours of zzz's.

we really love this kid and all his expressions and opinions. i love how much he makes each person in our family feel super special.

more of the fourth.

after grabbing breakfast tacos and resting, friday afternoon we headed out to lakeway for a party at one of justin's co-worker's house. he and his family are currently living in his dad's gigantic house near the lake while his parents are living in california for a few years for work. bonus for us, because their house (and especially their pool) is amazing. the kids were in the water for no less than four hours - no exaggeration. there was barbecue and a bunch of other yummy sides, but my kidlets were primarily interested in eating the cheetos. and the fruit skewers, but those don't make hilarious photos the way that cheez on kid faces does.

a few highlights: hollis's hair/face every time i applied and reapplied sunscreen. i try to rub it in better, but he just isn't having it.

we finally left around 9 or 9:30 and h passed out in the car within seconds. emme stayed up the whole drive home and we got to see fireworks around the city which was awesome. when we got home, i made grilled cheese hummus sandwiches for the three of us after putting hollis down and then ek sat on my lap while daddy set off a few mild fireworks. seriously a great day.

check out that view! hollis loved sitting up in the summer sauna pool and looking out at the boats and birds.

there's some video of the two of them bouncing and playing on this thing. i was sure one of them would fly off and crack a tooth, but all skull bones remained intact that day.

mr. alex (justin's friend) introduced emme to water guns. no comment.

saturday and sunday were fun but a little bit more mellow. emme is lately obsessed with wearing my shoes and dresses and/or her dance costume at all times. this was breakfast saturday morning.

sunday the bode family came over and we grilled burgers and dogs and let the kids play. our kids are the exact same space apart - i was 7 weeks pregnant with each of my respective children when both of their boys came home from the hospital. hudson is such a sweetie to emme and they just cuddled up on the couch watching a movie for a little while after playing for a loooong time outside.

phil's.

justin has been out of town this week for work, so the kids and i have been keepin it real at home. it's been a surprisingly fun and easy week, even though there's been lots of busy-ness.

last night, i had a happy hour with the director of my MBA program who is leaving austin, so i had to hire a sitter for the kidlets. they love miss crystal, so it was kind of like a special treat for them. after school i brought them to phil's for a quick dinner and some playtime on the playground. hollis and i were wrapping up dinner and ek had gone back to the playground when i heard her freaking out. i look around the corner and she had climbed up into this spinny tulip thing. it started spinning and she couldn't get out (it wasn't going super fast, but i can understand why she was flipped).

anyway...it was hilarious to me, so before rescuing her i ran back to the table to grab my phone and snap a pic. i love this girl. of course, after she was out, hollis was insistent upon getting in there. he loved it - he kept throwing his head back and cackling. awesome.