My kids crack me up

Time for another installment of Lorelai-isms, because this chick continues to crack us up on the regular.



So one day, Adam was getting dressed for work and chose some jeans (not what Lorelai is used to seeing him wear). She yelled at him saying "mommy's jeans!!" and flopped to the ground in a meltdown until he picked a different pair. (To her credit, we both have a pair of MEKs that look similar. Twinsies!)

She also yelled at him when she thought he was using my loofah in the shower. Ha!



She loves to get baby wipes for her baby doll, Emmy, and pull the legs back to wipe her bottom. She's very thorough. If only she could be that thorough on herself after she pees (and not use that same wipe on her face. Yeah, that happened.)

In a conversation with Adam, I said "You're my hubby!" Lorelai heard and repeated "you're my happy?" Sounds about perfect to me :)



Make no mistake, this girl is heavy! And I let her know it when I pick her up or have to carry her for a long time. She's started to imitate me, complete with sound effects, saying "Ergh, Emmy's so heavy" when she carries her doll and "Ergh, Lorelai's so heavy, Mommy?" when I pick her up.

And she makes this "Ooooh" face all the time. I just want to eat her up.



Lorelai apparently doesn't like the "p" sound, so she says things like "Fillow fet" and "i-Fad." She also says "Cinder Bella" instead of Cinderella. I don't correct her, it's just too freakin' cute.

She also refers to herself in the third person. She'll say "that's a picture of my Lorelai" or "need a tissue for my Lorelai" or "need a band aid for my Lorelai." (Yes, she's still obsessed with band aids.)



Lorelai isn't the only one saying the darnedest things. After Logan got his really long double-sided Darth Maul light saber to go with his Halloween costume, he was playing with it and said "it's really hard to play with this thing without hitting yourself in the nuts."



Logan has also started saying "oh em gee" or just "oh em...". Not sure where he got that from, I really don't think I say OMG out loud like that (or maybe I do? Oops.)



Aidan also cracks me up sometimes with the funny things he says. But lately, it's the tone of voice he's been using--sounding just like a snarky teen. On multiple occasions, I've heard him snark to Logan, "seriously, Logan? Seriously?! Did you really just ___??" Don't worry, I try not to let him see me laugh because I don't really encourage that kind of talk--it's only funny now when it's not directed at me or Adam. :)



And thanks to at least one kid in his class (which is a story for another post, probably), Aidan is now very aware of curse words. I had music on during dinner one night and Aidan leaned over to me and whispered, "Mommy. They just said the h word." Oy. His poor innocence. But the way he whispered it so seriously to me so his brother and sister wouldn't hear was really funny.



Kids are just so funny. So glad I've got a few of my own for some good laughs. :)

Nervous.

I've got to present some slides tomorrow at an all day meeting and I'm really nervous. I hate public speaking.

I dodged a bullet by not having to travel to my company's main office to do the presentation in person, and I don't have to actually stand up in front of the group, but we're supposed to do a video conference and it's to a whole group of people I don't regularly work with, including a lot of senior staff. It's a big deal. I don't really know what to expect, some of the subject matter is outside of my comfort zone, and I hate public speaking. I mentioned that already, huh?

I do have to say that I've really come a long way in terms of my ability to speak in front of people, which I'm super proud of. I used to get nervous just going around the room and giving a simple status update at staff meetings, and now I lead multiple different meetings, two of which are daily. I have conference calls all the time and don't get nervous about those. But there's just something about the context and the audience that flips a switch on my nerves. Put some VPs in the room, call it a presentation, and boom. My stomach is in knots.

But I've got my notes and I know people are there to back me up if I get stuck, so I'm just crossing my fingers that my slides go over well and my brain continues to function through my nerves. Hmmmm, what are the odds I can convince them to order me a glass of wine with my lunch? :)

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And in an effort to take my mind off the meeting tomorrow, here's my weekly photo dump:




Aside from almost nightly meltdowns from Lorelai, last week was good, and this weekend was really great. Highlights:

• Amazing weather, so lots of time outside. (Who needs tennis courts? Cul-de-sac tennis FTW!)
• I even went on a run with the boys on their bikes and Lorelai in the jogging stroller!!!
• A family breakfast at Bob Evans.
• A sweet sister checking on Logan who had a tummy ache.
• An independent little lady who got herself all "ready" to go with grandma and the boys to cousin Isaiah's football game on Saturday (she was not so happy when I told her she wasn't going...)
• Quality time with my girl while the boys were out and about with grandma.

I'm also doing #30daysofthankful on Instagram, so I'll be sharing those photos in a post at the end of the month.

Lady of leisure

Ok, I could really get used to being a lady of leisure. I'm maxed out on my vacation at work and I've already started to lose hours, so since I already had an appointment for today, I figured I'd take the whole day off to shop and do whatever I want. It was good timing, too, because work is stressing me out these days. I needed some me time like whoa.

I spent almost 2 glorious hours at Target this morning after I dropped Lorelai off and school and got the boys on the bus. Just me and my Starbucks, browsing leisurely with no one jumping out of carts, running around the aisles, asking to leave, asking for toys, etc, etc.


Despite the semi-scowl, I was in my happy place (I was just frustrated because the funhouse mirror by the sunglasses were giving me a complex--I had to take a pic with my phone to decide which glasses I liked best) . And you better believe those are the $8 sunglasses; the $17 ones are too rich for my blood ;)


Then I headed to my appointment, hit Old Navy for a couple of things, grabbed some quick lunch at home, and then instead of sitting on my butt the rest of the day (which would have also been really nice, but I'm all caught up on my DVR'd shows now so there was nothing to watch), I headed back out to Goodwill. I hoped to find some inspiration for a Pinterest-y DIY project or Christmas gift (oh yeah, holiday shopping is already stressing me out, too), but just ended up scoring some cheap pants for Lorelai and a couple of Christmas decorations. It was a successful trip, nonetheless.


Those color-coordinate aisles of clothes always make me giggle for some reason.

Truth be told, I'm actually not much of a shopaholic, because I'm cheap and indecisive, and get frustrated when I don't know exactly what I'm looking for, or can't find what I want in my price range. But you wouldn't have known that by looking in my Target cart today! The retail therapy was just what I needed this week. It was good for my mental health...and probably ended up cheaper than going to a shrink, ha!



The moral of this story is that I can't keep going going going...doing things for work, for my family, for my home, for everyone else, without specifically carving out time in my schedule just for me. But as a mom, it's just hard to actually do, especially when your kids are still young and clingy.

If only I had the kind of unlimited funds that not only allowed me to stay home but also to partake in as much retail therapy as I want. A girl can dream, right? It's cool, I can always schedule more days off and pretend every once in a while. :)

Happy election day, now go vote!

Just like the other 435,297 bloggers/facebookers/mother's cousin's uncles out there, I proudly report that I did my civic duty and voted with Adam last Friday, and urge everyone else who hasn't voted yet to do the same today.




I'm not going to get political (again) but I do think voting is important. Regardless of who you vote for, you should be informed, and make your voice heard. Since North Carolina is a battleground state, it's nice to know that my vote truly matters, which is not something I really felt during the first two presidential elections I voted in.

(But let me just say that after today, I'm really looking forward to my Facebook feed, tv and mailbox getting back to normal! It's sad that politics always gets so dirty and people can become so openly hateful and intolerant of others' views.)

Currently {v.2}

Crazy kids. (Aidan's dressed up for wacky tacky day at school.)


Currently, I am...

Loving (and simultaneously loathing) the seemingly endless supply of Halloween candy we have. Particularly the mounds/almond joys, twix, butterfingers and Hershey's cookies 'n creme bars. And so the holiday weight gain begins...:(

Looking forward to the day when Lorelai decides to stop waking up at 6:30 (or earlier!) in the morning. At that point, she wants nothing to do with sleeping, so trying to get her to lay quietly in bed with us is futile. I end up getting kicked repeatedly, my hair pulled, yelled at, and the other morning she even blew her nose into my pillow. She also sang me a lullaby, which only redeemed her a little bit, because she basically screamed it.


Plus side: I got to work early enough on Friday to catch this beautiful sunrise. There's no filter on that first picture.

Cooking nothing good. Every night is a struggle to figure out something to fix for dinner, and it ususally ends up being something mexican like black beans and rice or quesadillas, or totally lame like mac and cheese. I haven't meal-planned in forever and I'm in a major food rut. Ugh.


My meal planning board has turned into Logan's spelling word practice board.

Catching up on some DVR'd shows I've missed over the last few weeks. We had to switch out our old DVR boxes for new ones, and I lost like 5 different shows I taped so I've had to find them online or OnDemand. Side note: Parenthood is SUCH a good show. I never get to watch it in real time because we watch Sons of Anarchy on Tuesdays at 10pm instead, but it's always at the top of my weekend must-watch list (assuming I have time).

Missing the warm (or even mild) weather. This is why fall isn't my favorite season--temperatures drop, which means winter is right around the corner. I hate being cold!


Cuddling up to Adam at the bus stop.

Feeling sick and tired and tired of being sick!! In general I don't think of myself as a sickly person, so I'm not handling this lingering cold very well at all. I think there must be something going on with my hormones that's contributing to this mess, because I feel pregnant, even though I'm not. Exhausted, emotional, sore boobs, nauseous. No fun. (Really, I swear I'm not pregnant.) I'm really hoping I'm on the upswing as of this weekend. Fingers crossed!

What's everyone else up to?

Linking up with This Amazing Day and Harvesting Kale.

Halloween sucks for the peanut allergic

This is Lorelai's first Halloween that we've known about her peanut allergy (we suspected it last year, but weren't going to give her candy anyway) and after looking at her haul from last night, I realize just how disappointing this might be in years to come. There's literally almost nothing in her bucket she can safely eat.


what she got vs. what's safe for her to eat (not sure if milk duds are safe, but they're too hard for her to chew)

I remember back in the day, this was my ideal bucket. It's the "good" candy—none of that bubble yum or generic hard candy crap that I would almost always throw out when I was a kid (or give to my mom...).

Of course she doesn't need the candy at all, even if it is safe, so this seems like such a petty complaint right now. But because of the boys, she's already asking for treats and she knows what her candy is, so it's hard telling her she can't have it.



I also know that candy isn't the only fun thing about Halloween (just like Christmas isn't just about the presents), and she did have fun dressing up, trick or treating and decorating her pumpkin, but it's such a tease to tell her to go ask for candy and then take it away from her right away. It's like having her open presents and then taking them back. No bueno!



Not sure how we'll handle this in years to come, but suggestions are welcome! In the meantime, at least Adam and I have a ton of good candy to share without feeling guilty about swiping it from the kids. :)

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween from my little ghouls!



The kids are in bed after a successful night of trick-or-treating, that's hopefully the last of the jerks who don't realize lights out means don't ring the doorbell, and I think I've finally warmed up. (It's not super cold, but I'm a wimp.)



I really considered only taking Lorelai around the cul-de-sac and then letting her stay at the house with my mom to hand out candy, but she was just so super excited to go to all the houses with the boys that I couldn't resist. By the end of the evening, she was waving to everyone and saying trick-or-treat right along with the boys.



I'm bummed because I don't think any of the photos on my good camera turned out so all I have might be these crappy iphone photos. At least it's something though. And I can always just console myself in the 3 buckets of candy we now have. ;)