paletas de ollie

These are just a few photos from Oliver's birthday this year. Oliver is a late bloomer. He weaned a little after three years old, left our bed shortly after that, and potty trained when he was damn well ready at about 3 1/2 years old. He started preschool at almost four years old and through no fault of his own still doesn't have a good friend. I didn't have a mommies' group with similarly aged children when Oliver was born like I did with Stella, and I spent way less time at the playground in his toddler years. We still had a lot of fun, but we never found a family with a little one Oliver's age that all of us clicked with or that lived near enough to us for Oliver to hang out with on a regular basis. 

Oliver is the type of guy who because of all of this calls a kid he's met for five minutes on the playground his friend. He is SO ready for kids and friends. He's the only kid out of the 16 at his preschool each day that doesn't speak Spanish, where it is immersion and no English is allowed, so he doesn't really have that going for him. With any luck he will start being able to communicate with the other kids and make some friends like his sister did when she was there. He's having fun now, but I'm sure he's hanging back like Stella did, trying to figure it all out.

For Oliver's birthday this year I brought popsicles (paletas) to his school to have after lunch at the end of the day. The kids took them home with them and some climbed to the top of the front steps above the school to eat them. Oliver stayed at the bottom at first, then we encouraged him to join the others. He went half way up, then some of the kids came down a few steps to join him. I just thought it was the sweetest thing.

Here is Oliver's third birthday party, a nautical Spongebob theme with mostly grown up guests, and here is his second birthday, which was a super small affair. xoxo

my vbac birth story

Little Ollie, our little man.

I've been wanting to tell this story of how Oliver was born for a long time. It was an amazing time for me, and also I think there's some good information here for other women who might be considering VBAC, which stands for vaginal birth after Caesarean section in case you didn't know. Oliver turned four the other day and there is little chance I will have any more birth stories to tell in this lifetime, so here goes it. It's a long one, so click on "read more" below to read more.

the walk

So much is getting ready to change here. We have just a week more of walking to school up and through the Panhandle. The past three years have been a blissful testament to a way of life David and I designed for our family. Slow mornings and slow weekends, with bursts of excitement here and there when opportunity presented itself. Harder on David than on us, but more or less on our terms. 

There is only one more week of just Oliver and I on our own, doing what we want. There is a lot of conversation between us, but none of it makes me have to put on my thinking cap like when Stella and I talk. No more incredibly simple days. We are at the end of early childhood in this house. Having Oliver when we did made us so much older, but it made me way younger, too.

As with the past two years, I am really looking forward to this summer vacation. We have two great trips planned, bookended by a lot of hiding from the cold inside our apartment. I cannot wait. I've found some architectural work, but I hope to strategize to keep it from interfering with our time together. I don't really know how that'll work yet. I am just super emotional about everything this week, all the while acknowledging that I've had it really good for really long. Change is brewing, for sure. Maybe it will still all be really good. Fingers crossed.

I don't know if anyone out there reads this here blog for more than basket-weaving tutorials, but if you do, I expect there will be a little more mommybloggging over the coming months. Have a great weekend. xoxo

this is halloween

Halloween 2012

(above photos by my friend Randy W.)

Halloween was great this year. We have really gotten our money's worth out of all of our costumes (see past years here, my favorite is Oliver as The Strongest Baby in the World). Stella wore her Dorothy of Oz costume for the third time. Our sweet friend Jeanette made the costume for Stella when she was three, and she has only skipped one year out of four (to be Supergirl). Oliver's Elmo (or as he insisted all night long, Dragon Elmo) costume finally paid for itself, making it's fourth appearance between the two kids. I donned Fridawear for one more night. I am hanging up that costume, that act and everything to do with it for a few years. I'm tired of the pins in my head and the unibrow. We trick-or-treated with Stella's school, and then in the evening with David, who once again looked better than all three of us combined. We called him Diego Rivera and it worked.

Stella and I had some fun with her hair. The kids are basically acersecomics, Oliver having never had a hair cut in his three years, and Stella only once, a quick trim, if you don't count the lock that was maddeningly cut by her friend years ago in a moment of inattention. We straightened her curly nest of hair and then set it in rollers to get great Dorothy ringlets while they watched The Great Pumpkin.

I may have begun to master some daytime photography, but the nighttime is a whole 'nother ballgame. Regardless, these two are so precious. Stella looked perfect, and people were lifting Dragon Elmo off the ground to hug him like a puppet, he was so adorable. I don't know if I can bring myself to part with these costumes now. I am sure are kids who would really love them, so I probably will next year. 

I hope your Halloween was lots of fun. Today was a conscious day of mainlining candy for me. I did it up, Tiffanie-style. I have had so much really helpful feedback on this post, so many things that make so much sense and have affected me a lot. Not enough to stop this one last Halloween candy feeding frenzy (I'm only human), but things I must implement right away. Onward and upward!

Have a great weekend, and thank you for reading!

class clown

Oliver came to Stella's classroom birthday party a few weeks ago. He was so well behaved and fit right in among the second graders. They all ate the birthday treats we baked, and then it was time for show and tell, or "Share", as Stella's teacher calls it. And then shit got really funny. REALLY funny. He was hamming it up big time while Stella was "sharing" him, and then when he turned and threw a big stuffed elephant up onto the podium after Stella was finished, all the kids lost it. They were laughing so hard at this strange long haired baby, who said with a total straight face, "This is an elephant. He has a tail. I'm outta here!", and then marched away. I was crying I was laughing so hard. I'm laughing to myself right here, alone in the middle of the night just looking at these photos. He did it again after another of Stella's classmates finished her share. This guy LOVES to get a laugh, he is such a clown. 

Have a great weekend!

ollie's spongebob birthday party

Oliver's third birthday party was a few weekends ago. Through no fault of his own, he really has no little friends yet, so it was a grown up affair for the most part. Oliver wanted a SpongeBob SquarePants party, so we did a nautical/SpongeBob theme. 

To be honest, our apartment is so small and has so many festive things and art projects everywhere, sometimes it's hard to tell that we've decorated it for a party. That's the truth. I did order some white and blue balloons, made some new bunting (I know, I KNOW!), and bought the SpongeBob pieces they use on the cakes at the grocery store to put on my own slumpy but pretty cool cake (here is Oliver's cake from last year at Apartment Therapy, by the way). I scattered some pineapples around and filled a SpongeBob piñata with pirate eye patches and gummy Krabby Patties and little sea creatures. The menu was all over the place. Usually I'm proud of my party menus and post them as a special feature here called "menu" (what else?), but this one had no cohesive element. Banh Mi and olive cheese balls, anyone?

We all had a good time. Oliver had a GREAT TIME! He never stopped smiling or moving, except when little Gemma tried to touch his crackers. The precious, precious thing about Oliver is that he is so gentle (and possibly sheltered...I'm working on it) that when the piñata broke open he asked for permission to grab something. And at the end of singing "Happy Birthday", he sang happy birthday to his sister, instead of to himself. It's probably because I'm his mother, but I found those things heartbreakingly sweet.

Here are some photos from the day. They are noisy and fuzzy and not great, but I don't want to forget the day. xo

photo booth

I love the Photo Booth on my laptop. I use it almost every week. I love it because it removes a lot of the age from my face, although those dark circles always win. I love it because if I am writing on the computer and Oliver is playing near me, he will always stop and try to get his photo taken. And, I love it because you can use it to make yourself look like a character from Drawing Restraint 7 with very little effort. Oh yes, I did just drop a Matthew Barney reference. I was in design school in the late-eighties/early-nineties. He left quite an impression on all of us, whether we understood his work or not.

I just found a ton of these photos, from when we're goofing around and when I'm up late working. Some of them are from when I just want to see a decent photo of myself, because I am less photogenic than ever in real life these days (believe it). 

Have a great Labor Day weekend everyone! xoxo