Of beautiful clothes and things

My cousin got married a few weeks ago. They are a beautiful young couple and graciously offered to let all four little cousins be in the wedding. Thus began a Bataan Death March trying to figure out what they would wear. It was stressful, y'all. Partly because I thought my sister who has way more fashion sense and attention to detail about this stuff than me had ordered the dresses back in February when we first talked about it. As such, we all realized about two weeks out that we didn't have anything planned. Fortunately, she came through and found something perfect. Dressing for weddings is always a challenge, and dressing for the Unitarian wedding of an atheist religion professor to a minister made it that much more interesting.

Seriously, folks should get married every weekend just to make little kids look this damn cute.

The wedding party. The wedding was in the morning, the most formal time of the day. I suspect it was actually to cut down on the drinking and swearing the comes with weddings though. A few still managed to knock back a dozen drinks at a formal luncheon, but imagine how much worse it would have been at 7 p.m.?

Let the record reflect even the adults dressed for the occasion. I like that dress - I just got it. An added bonus was that it looks like Julia Roberts' dress in Pretty Woman when she goes to the polo match and Jason Alexander calls her out for being a hooker. Fortunately, no one called me a hooker this time. Unfortunately, no one accused me of looking like Julia Roberts either.

The whole family. Bjorn is standing on a step lower than everyone else and he still looks taller than everyone.

All four grandchildren. I loved how the outfits turned out. Andy is wearing a hand-me-down suit. There was some debate as to whether he needed something black but I think this worked out. I did call around everywhere (naturally on the Thursday before a Saturday morning wedding in another state) trying to find a bow tie. I finally found a Christmas tie on sale at Janie and Jack. It's too big so my dad stole a paper clip from some flowers in the church to fix it. He's MacGyver for wedding outfits.

Andy's job was to hand out programs and he was quite proud of himself for having such an important job. All sixty guests needed those programs. Bjorn was there to make sure he did it because while he recognized the importance, he was a little shy to just shove them into people's hands.

He knew how cute he was and was posing. That kid ain't always shy.

So Nashville (randomly if you ask me) has the world's only life-size replica of the Parthenon in Greece. Despite our mocking, it was actually kind of cool and impressive. Loads of people were there taking wedding pictures that day. There were also a lot of men wandering around with their shirts off and jean shorts.  Bjorn and I agreed that straight men, even in the south, don't wear jorts and no shirt.

Andy was dancing for us. That kid has white guy moves, but he can really move it.

Fancy pants camera

I am still loving my fancy pants camera (and the fancy pants husband who gave it to me). I'm now coveting a new device that will let me post pictures even faster. In the meantime, here are some recent fancy pants pictures.

This girl can move! Here she is jamming at Andy's soccer game.

Classic father-son photograph. Classic picture of Mark refusing to smile.

The "boys", our boy kittens Perry and Mittens. I thought they were so cute asleep like that.

How good looking are these folks?

Our friends Jenny and Sean who were kind enough to ply me with wine and let me stay at their house last time I was traveling.

Andy getting a badge for his work at the last Cub Scout meeting. The whole Cub Scout business is really adorable. It also satisfies Andy's need for outdoorsy stuff that's not necessarily a competitive sport.

Mark really needed a haircut.

Dad in Arizona. We climbed "A" mountain in Phoenix right next to Arizona State University. It was a nice hike, and short, but staight up. I really dug Phoenix. Next time Mary does a triathalon, I want to bring the family and stay for a few days.

Sun Devil stadium from "A" Mountain.

Mary and Mom before race day.

Mary's car all decorated. Elizabeth and I did this after a few drinks and a $100 win at the casino. We are very cool and have fantastic talent.

Mary after the 1.5 MILE swim. That's right, 1 1/2 MILES in the water. And that's just the first leg of this Ironman triathalon. Seriously, it was amazing and inspiring. And naturally, I haven't exercised since.

Cool picture of the bridge and all the bikes.

The bridge at night. As you can see, I was really loving the fancy camera. I thought it turned out really nicely.

Mary after 1 1/2 miles in the water, 112 miles on the bike and 12 miles running. I was tired and I walked a mile. Seriously, it's amazing.

Bjorn putting the star on the Christmas tree.

Andy doing his spelling "sort."

Work

A room with a view.

The most exciting -- an event at the former Versace mansion.

You know, a place like Miami isn't normally my style. It's dressy in an odd way, caters to over (and under) dressed people and is all about show. Yet after spending four days there for work, I kind of dug it. Hanging out in South Beach in a fancy hotel with a great view certainly makes it better. I just appreciated the flair of it being different than just the regular nice enough work hotel with a nice enough restaurant in a big city.

Thanksgiving

We went back to Virginia for Thanksgiving. It was a really good trip seeing family and friends. In fact, it was such a good trip I found myself a little wistful that we'd left it all behind. It was sort of like that first Thanksgiving home after going off to college. Sure, I liked school a lot and sure I had new friends, but nothing quite compared yet to everything I had at home. Plus, it was so fun seeing everyone at home again when it was all a big party and lots of interesting stories to catch up on. I even went into the office one day and caught up with everyone there. Lots of good, exciting personal news happening in the office that I was happy to hear about, too.

All that said, I was happy to get home yesterday and sleep in my own bed knowing the kids would (more or less) sleep in their own beds. The kids shared a room at Margareta's, which worked fine until about day three or four when Meg realized 1) she could get out, 2) she could smack her brother around and 3) she could roam upstairs to where we were sleeping. The guest bed is plenty big and comfy for two, not so much for three, including one who sleeps perpendicular.

We are now actively making plans to host all of Bjorn's family here for Christmas 2011. Bjorn and I are thrilled at the thought of having everyone stay with us here. This gives us a year to stock up on furniture and air mattresses for the kids and think of things for everyone to do, besides the customary eating and drinking lots.

Here are the kids (and their ginormous Pillow Pets TM with Fafa at Dulles Airport.

Meg and Andy (he's the blur of stripes) using Jennifer as a horse. She was thrilled. Obviously.

Margareta and Willie -- family friends for more than 40 years. Isn't that cool?

The kids and Fafa working a puzzle.

Auntie Viv and Andy.

Andy and his BFF Liam (and our BFFs Jenny and Sean). It was so fun seeing them and drinking their fine wine and beer.

Some of the C-spot girls (women?) at a friend's birthday party. They are just awesome.



Travel

So I was in San Diego for work last week. It's a good thing I didn't visit before we moved or I might have thought about relocating there instead. Dang, it's gorgeous, temperate and has an interesting landscape with both the ocean and the mountains. I am sure I wouldn't be able to afford anything nearly as nice anywhere nearly as cool as where I was staying, but it was a nice fantasy. Check out this view from the convention center? That's some mighty fine advertising, my friends.

Tasmanian Devil

And we're back from the most amazing vacation ever -- two weeks in Australia visiting Sydney, Hobart, Port Arthur and Melbourne. What's most amazing is that we did it with two little kids. Andy for the most part was fine and seemed to really get a lot out of it, except when he was whining, insisting on watching more My Little Pony and refusing to eat anything. Meg was a different matter. She insisted I hold her most of the time and seemed only be consoled by me. Flattering, yes, but not so much at three in the morning.

The trip overall was amazing. Qantas Airlines is quite a step above the American airlines. Seriously. They are like the good American airliners from 10 years ago, they served meals on every flight, were clean and even offered special kids toys to keep them entertained. I was impressed.

We spent three days in Sydney at the beginning and got to see my uncle, nephew, and aunt who live in Turramurra. We stayed in a hotel near Hyde Park and was within walking distance to the Sydney Opera House and Sydney Harbor. It was cool. We took the ferry one day to Tarronga Zoo. The zoo itself was swarming with people, half under constructions plus the kids were still cranky from the travel, but the ferry ride on the harbor was amazing. I think I took a dozen photos. With the jet lag, we were waking up at 4 in the morning, which was handy with World Cup matches on at that early hour.

Afterward, we caught a flight to Hobart, Tasmania, where we met up with my parents, both my sisters (no nieces though) for the Egan Clan Rally. It was pretty awesome. We were staying in two bedroom flats so it was great fun to catch up with everyone at the bar or in another room. Bjorn and I bought some gin on our way into the country which served us well. After the first day of the rally where we toured the City Hall and Parliament House (Hobart is the state capital), we headed to Port Arthur, home of one of Australia's most famous prisons (and also site of a sad and deadly shooting a dozen years ago that is still painful for the area like Columbine). We got to ride another boat around Stewart's Bay. I've never seen such clear ocean water. We also saw seals (well, a seal)! Pretty awesome. Mom found us these amazing little cabins near Port Arthur where we went out one night for some great star gazing. Fortunately, Mary was there to help use her geoscience background to tell us about the southern hemisphere. I swear I've never seen such bright stars. It was like we were in a planetarium they were so close to touch.

Afterwards, we were back in Hobart for some lectures on genealogy and more festivities and the big banquet that included lots of photos from when Mom and Dad hosted the rally in Dallas in 2006. Before departing Hobart, we had dinner with our hosts at their home built turn of the century. It was pretty amazing to see a private residence, much less one that had so much history. Before leaving, Bjorn rented a car and we got to visit the Zoo Doo outside Richmond, Tasmania, where we got to feed and pet wallabies and kangaroos. I loved it. We also got to watch Tasmanian Devils at feeding. Ugly little creatures, they are.

We then headed to Melbourne for a few days before catching our flight back to the U.S. My uncle and nephew also came down from Sydney to see the rest of the family. We also went out to the home of another Egan rally member who lives outside of town. They have six grown kids, and three were at the house that night with their families. It was so warm and inviting. My kids also had playmates their own age for a night. They loved it. And we all loved getting to talk to their kids who are our age about what life is like with kids in Australia.

There were some funny things about the country.

* There are a remarkable lack of trash cans. A hotel room with two bedrooms and a kitchenette might have one tiny powder room sized trash can for the entire room.
* The country doesn't seem to believe in napkins. We would order dinner and they would bring like one cocktail napkin for the whole table. If you asked for more, you might get one more, maybe two.
*  The sizing on clothes was wacky. Granted, Bjorn is not petite, but the men's XXLs in Australia would fit me.
* Everything is abbreviated. Australia is Aussie, Tasmania is Tassie, football is footy. The best though? McDonald's is Mackers.
* The country is incredibly diverse. I would say half the people we saw in Melbourne and Sydney were of Asian or Middle Eastern descent.
* There was no Foster's beer served anywhere. When I asked someone about it, they laughed. Apparently it's a big joke that it's for export only and is pretty much considered crap beer locally.
* In Australia, apparently service in restaurants is optional. I know we're rude Americans, but we had two encounters where the wait staff thought we were "rude" for inquiring about our dinner. I thought it was sort of hilarious actually.
* Otherwise, the country was incredibly friendly. People would help strangers carry strollers up the subway steps and practically everyone we met was excited for us to be there and wanted to help however they could.

Traveling with family was in some ways a pain trying to coordinate the needs and wants of a group of eight, but in general, it was really awesome to do it all together.

Paperwork

We took the kids on Saturday to get their passports in preparation of our Australia trip this summer. I had scouted out the post office a few weeks ago, getting the paperwork and asking exactly what we needed to get their passports. The biggest thing was we needed both parents in person, official birth certificates, not copies, and that we should not sign anything until asked in person. I also learned we could get their passport pictures taken there, which seemed just as good as trying to do it at Costco and be told later it was the wrong size.

I scouted out the Burke post office on a Friday and it was dead. Not so at 11:30 a.m. on a Saturday morning. It was packed. We waited about 40 minutes until our turn. At a certain point, they split out the passport people from the regular post office people. Unfortnately, by 12:10, the kids were luggage. Andy was toast from gymnastics and together they were an unstoppable, whining force. I was so proud. The guy at the desk was taking the whole thing incredibly seriously and was not amused by the kids. Kind of a bummer since there were a dozen families like ours there.

It was time to take the kids back for their pictures, or as Bjorn and I like to call them, their first mug shots. God, they are awful. Just awful. Part of it was they had to have both eyes fully open (no squinting when saying cheese) and looking right at the camera. So after five minutes of each not doing it right, he finally settled on pictures where they look half resigned, half crazed. I love that they'll have to carry them around for five years.

By the end, we were settling up at the counter and I turned around to see Andy lying on the floor with his hands in his pants. Naturally right in front of an entire line of folks waiting to mail packages. Course, he wasn't crying or whining anymore so I think the rest of the patrons prefered it over the former.

The best news is that the passport applications are on their way and we'll have them within four to eight weeks. Jubilee! Bjorn needs a new passport, too, but he just has to get new pictures and mail them it with his old passport and an application. Far easier.

I pledge allegiance, to the Elmo

I am back from a four day work trip. Bjorn was gone for 36 hours of it so the big kids were in charge of the little kids. I must say, I am quite impressed with how they held up. Meg was still getting over a sinus infection and had a bad cough that made her vomit occasionally while Andy managed to contract diarrhea just for sport. The meeting itself was so busy that I didn't have too much time to worry about everyone. Fortunately, Mark and Jennifer did a great job.

We did manage to swing through this cool Muir Woods natural forest on our way to Napa. Look at me holding up that big tree! I am very cool. In part due to Facebook, I have reconnected with a ton of friends who live in the San Francisco area. Unfortunately, I only got to see Bjorn's brother and his family. For all of an hour. On my way to the airport.

Bjorn picked me up at nearly 1 a.m. last night. It was so great to be in my own bed and see the kids. In tucking Andy in, I noticed he had used a dry erase marker to create an enormous mural all over his wall under his loft bed and all over his bed. Good times. Fortunately Miss Ayesha gave me a magic eraser and it really did work. On the wood. The walls are still a mess. Nail polish worked a little and I hear rubbing alcohol works a little better.

Andy missed me altough his main interest was what I brought him. Fortunately I picked up a frog night light from Muir Woods on our way out of the city so I had something other than a shower cap and mints to give him. Meg just cared that Elmo existed. Practically every sixth word is Elmo and if Elmo is on anything or even on her mind, it drives her wild and she's all distracted. If Elmo is her his boyfriend, I am totally screwed when she turns 12 and is actually interested in boys.

Phew

We are back. I, for one, am exhausted. I have a feeling my mother as uber hostess for many is beat as well.

It was so fantastic seeing my parents, my sisters and my adorable five and 2 1/2-year-old nieces. Andy and Margaret had the times of their lives. I loved watching that. It all made me wistful that we don't live closer. It is always hard traveling for the holidays and then trying to be a good house guest when my kids insist on smearing yogurt on the kitchen floor and then while I'm trying to triage that situation, the other one starts eating her yogurt with a knife. Oh, and let's not forget Meg forgot how to sleep while we were there. No fool, she sensed our weakness and inability to let her cry and ended up in bed with us probably every night at least for a bit before waking up before six FOR THE DAY. Of course, today -- our last morning -- Mom had to wake her up in order to leave for the airport to catch a flight that was then delayed nearly three hours. Fortunately both kids were angels on the plane, once Andy got down throwing a 30 minute fit that his new favorite cat Meowey was in our checked luggage. This after I asked the kid before I checked it if he was okay with that. Poor kid is practically luggage himself after so much excitement the past week. I, too, and worn out.

I also look forward to the years to come with the kids are easier to travel with and easier to send out of the room to play games with each other while we catch up and play bridge.

There are lots of great pictures to share, but right now I'm just too damn tired. I am planning to watch a little Tivo BY MYSELF IN MY OWN ROOM and then go to bed. I am crazy like that.

Happy Thanksgiving

There is so much to be thankful for, especially my awesome family that never fails to make me laugh, even when I really want to throttle them.

We're off to Dallas in 36 hours. Andy wanted to start packing yesterday. Fortunately we're going to be down at the ranch so I'll really just needs lots of casual clothes. Well, that presumes I have formal clothes.

Meg is *just* on the cusp of talking. She says things sometimes that are so clear and crisp I think they must be from Andy and then they're not. I'm hoping time with the family, especially her cousins, will help her pick up a few new phrases. I hope they're clean phrases at least.

Andy and I have been talking a lot about the stars so I'm excited to him out of the city where we can look at the stars and see the Milky Way and Orion. When I got back from Chicago, I put some glow in the dark stars on his wall in the shape of the Big Dipper and Orion (Orion was much more complicated than I remember). It will be fun to get away from the city lights and see the sky. We've also been doing lots of "hikes" around the neighborhood. I have a nice backpack for Meg and then the three of us start tromping. I love that they like it half as much as I do. I find Andy's not so whiny on a mission. I'm not sure how we're all going to fit at the ranch house. It should be an adventure for everyone.

She walks! Mostly!

On her 15-month-birthday, Bjorn and I watched her walk six or seven steps, stop to look at something and reload, and then walk four or five more steps. That's walking, right? We were so proud we both sort of teared up. Precious darling angel baby is now a walker. Well, some of the time. When she feels like it.

Bjorn is out of town again tonight. I sure hope he lands some of these deals. Fortunately, Jennifer is coming by to help. It's very convenient with her eight minute commute. Plus, it's nice catching up with her and hearing what's going on. It's hard to believe the biggest of the angel babies (Jennifer) starts her first real job on Monday after moving into her first real apartment last week. And to think I knew her when.

It's funny, Bjorn and I were dating back when I was her age. In retrospect, I can only imagine what the other parents at the soccer and basketball games must have thought of me barely in my 20s standing on the sidelines with a bunch of parents in their 40s. Bjorn was young for the crowd in his early 30s, but they probably didn't know that. I imagine I really did look like some chippie/trophy wife.

I am in need of a vacation and this 90 degree heat has me dreaming of the beach. If you have ideas for beach spots on the east coast, let me know.

This and that

It's been an interesting week with the holiday, inaugural and all, so I'll just share a few gems of the week.

Meg
1) Meg is pointing. AT EVERYTHING. It's adorable. Except when she insists on pointing her finger into my mouth or eye.
2) She loves climbing the stairs and getting around my gates. She always pulls the one down off the stairs in the living room so I have an eagle eye out for that. Then this morning, she tore down my makeshift gate in the basement while I was doing something important, like Facebook. I turned around and she was half way up the stairs. Yikes!
3) We are working on some sleep readjustment, with modest success (fingers crossed, knock wood, knock wood again). I have been tinkering with her bedtime, pushing it to 7:30 in the hopes that it gets us to at least 6:00 a.m. I took her to the doctor on Tuesday to confirm no ear infection before I started work. Fingers crossed things continue to improve. Mama is tired!
4) She can stand. On her own! Not for a long period of time, but I watched her do it twice today. Walking, here she comes!
5) Oh, and to totally bury the lead, Meg turns one, on Monday. I can hardly believe it. I had to be at the hospital where I delivered last week for work and it was sort of surreal thinking I was just there a year ago in that very parking lot. I have pictures of the entrance and everything.

Andy
1) He is infatuated with Diego and loves to sing the theme song. I like Diego better than Dora, but the show is still pretty stupid. There was an episode featuring chinchilla mountain and it had some small mountain with all these little rat looking things all over the top like sprinkles. Odd.
2) I have been trying to work on positive stuff about our days. Here is a classic:
"Andy, my favorite part of the day was tonight when you and Meg were playing tit-ut (peek-a-boo) together. I loved listening to you two laughing. What was your favorite part of the day?"
"...Juice. I liked getting juice."
"...Sigh."
3) Today we went over to the creek, which was still partially frozen despite it being almost 55 today. We threw rocks at the ice. We loved it!
4) He is suddenly into bagels and insists on having them for practically every meal.

Me
1) I went to my OB's office today. It was so odd being there. Having gone practically once a week for nearly a year, it felt like going back to high school after you graduate. The facilities were more or less the same, but it all felt different. I was also very glad to not be pregnant in that waiting room.
2) With all the sleep problems, I have inexplicably misplaced my Health Sleep Habits book that I have practically dog-eared and memorized. I have been looking for it everywhere (and even cleaning some in the process. Grrr.)
3) I have to go out of town next weekend for work. It's always hard for me to leave, but I know Bjorn is exceptionally capable and always handles everything great. I will also get a chance to look up Armando. Although seeing him twice in one month after not seeing him in more than four years may be too much.

"Hi!"

I walked into my babysitter's house this week and Meg crawled around the corner and said, "Hi." It was so perfect and adorable, I nearly fell over. I scooped her up for a hug and kiss, she smiled and pushed me away so she could go back to crawling.

She has said, "Mama" before and really seemed to mean me, and now she can with some regularity say, "Hi" on command (well, only when it's her command really, of course).

We leave for Dallas tomorrow and, on cue, Meg seems to have some type of stomach bug. She had a lot of loose stools yesterday and then some full blown (heh) diarrhea last night. I am experimenting with some soy formula that I have a sample of and Ayesha was going to give her rice and other carbs today to try to help solve the problem. I also gave her some yogurt this morning and could hear my mother's mantra in my head about the "good" bacteria. Hopefully the combination of treatments and time will cure her before our trip.

Happy Holidays

Hey look! A picture of the four of us! Together!

We went to Alexandria yesterday in theory for the parade of lights where boats are decorated for the holidays and cruise by. This sounded great except for two things -- apparently the parade started at 6 p.m., not at 4 p.m. like I thought (that's when the music started or something), and secondly, that is was snowing. We ended up tooling around for a couple of hours and then getting home late, like 6:30. Both kids were good sports even though it was late and cold.

Knock wood, but Meg is usually a pretty good sleeper. The problem lately is that she is getting up earlier and earlier, like the unholy hour 5:45 a.m., and eagerly and enthusiastically ready for the day. The books I've read say that an earlier bedtime actually makes them sleep later, but I'm pretty hard pressed to get her to bed at 6:30 p.m. like I want to. I'm a little curious to see how things are going to go when we're in Dallas, what with all the festivities, alcohol consumption by myself and falling back an hour to Central Time.

I also haven't exactly figured out the configuration for the plane. We got seats for all four of us (thanks, Mom!). Andy will be easy so long as the batteries to the DVD player work, but I haven't decided about Meg. She's long outgrown the baby car seat that would be really easy to hook into the airplane seat. We have a cool car seat/stroller combo (again, thanks Mom!), but it's a little bulky and I think I'd like to have a better stroller with me in Dallas. We don't need car seats since my mother has an extra set in her cars for my nieces. She's really a little too small still to sit in a seat without anything propping her up, and most importantly, stapping her down so she can't run anywhere. Thoughts and suggestions?

The swing of things

Well, it took about 30 minutes to be back into the swing of things. After lots of hugs, it was back to the regular feeding, bathing, playing sleeping schedule. Bjorn even said that it would not take as long as I liked to be back to normal. He was right. And that's good and bad. The good part was feeling like I hadn't missed too much. The bad part was I felt exhausted from the week and didn't really get a chance to recover before I was back at work. It's all good though.

Both kids have colds right now. Meg has a pretty good cough and runny nose, but generally she seems to feel okay. Andy has a milder cough and runny nose that he likes to wipe on his shirt no matter what I say.

Meg is really moving around these days. I put her on the floor and within seconds she's somewhere else. She's not crawling per se, but she pushes herself backwards and pushes and rolls herself from side to side. My days of letting her play on the floor quietly while I work on the computer are dwindling, I can tell.

It's all very exciting and yet it's all happening so fast. Since this is my last baby, I want to savor it (well, the good parts anyway), but I love that every day she gets closer to really interacting with us. And I just melt when she beams at Andy and he pauses long enough to do a dance for her. On the other hand, I look forward to the days when they can truly play together (well, until they fight and demand intervention). There are also so many fun things to do with older kids, like zoos, hikes, parks, ponds, slides that a 20 pound baby just doesn't get and that I can't enjoy or participate in really while lugging her around.

Above is a picture of the Red Sox/Indians game I went to, as obviously taken with my cell phone camera. The fun part was the Red Sox clinched the playoffs with their win so it was an even more exciting game than usual to attend. Good thing it was exciting because I was so tired I nearly fell asleep in the 8th inning.

The conquering hero returns

Phew. It was a long week and I'm back. It feels great to be home. I went with Bjorn to pick Andy up from school who was thrilled to see me and kept saying he "miss-ed" me while I was gone. He also appreciated the gifts, although most special are the free chocolates from the Westin turn-down service, the green pen that lights up and the "special soap" that makes bubble bath, again from the hotel. I should enjoy this inexpensive gift giving. Certainly there will come a time when that's not enough and he'll instead demand a pony when I return from a trip. When I went to get Meg, it took her a few seconds to take in who I was. That was kind of cute to see her process my face and then smile big.

As expected, Bjorn did fantastic while I was gone. The house looks great (it helps that the maids came yesterday) and the kids are well fed and happy. Unfortunately, both seem to have slight colds today, but it has been nearly three weeks since our last illnesses so it was bound to happen.

The trip itself was long, but good. Our media coverage (my job) was fantastic and that makes up for a lot. I also managed to squeeze in a visit with an old college friend and a trip to Fenway Park in between working 13 hour days. It was a long hard week, both work wise and emotionally but I'm glad I went and I'm sure glad I'm home.

Breaking the rules

Between reffing football games and campaigning for Obama, Bjorn has been out a lot of nights lately. Usually I get Meg through a bath, final bottle, some quiet time together and then bedtime, then I work on Andy getting him through his bath and teeth brushing. Usually if there are "no crybabies" at bath time, I let him come to my room to watch an episode of Ninja Warrior on Tivo while he gets into his diaper for sleeping and pajamas (yes, he still sleeps in a diaper. He's 99 percent potty trained during the day with the occasional accident, but his diaper is still wet in the morning. I figure eventually he'll be ready to give that up eventually).

Anyway, after our bedtime routine, we usually read a book and then he goes to bed, but with Bjorn out so much and me being so tired, I have taken to letting him sleep in my bed until Bjorn comes home. Andy and I talk about it, how Daddy will come move him when he gets home because I don't want Andy to be scared when he wakes up in his own bed.

When Andy was a baby, he never really slept with us. There were the occasional one-off nights, but generally, he slept in his own crib for nap and nighttime. When I was pregnant last fall and Andy was starting to give up his afternoon nap, I started napping with him. Sometimes it worked better than others. If he's not tired, he gets all "kicky" and that makes me cross and neither of us gets sleep. But on a good day when we're both sleepy? Wow. It's actually rather heavenly to be cuddled up on my little guy. The time will come when he wants nothing to do with me, but right now I'm enjoying it.

I leave for Boston tomorrow. I think I have everything lined up for Bjorn while I'm gone. I'm not worried about Andy, but I do want to make sure he has Meg under control so I keep bothering him with stupid things like, "You know you can't leave her alone on the bed while you shower in the morning, right?" "You know you can't give her anything she might choke on, right?" "And don't forget to put a pillow behind her when she's sitting because she sometimes wipes out and bonks her head." "You know she really likes to watch Gilmore Girls reruns." Wait, that's me. Never mind.

Travel

I don't travel much for work. Probably two or three times a year, I have to go away for a weekend. Then once a year, we have a big meeting and I have to go away for a week. And during that week, I turn into one of those women that I totally made fun of before I had a kid. One of those people that can't enjoy the time away, instead frets about the whole thing and arrives at the last minute and leaves as early as I can.

But it's stupid for me to do that. Bjorn is an exceptional dad and has the whole thing under control while I'm gone. We had daycare set up and he has backup in the form of his brother, mother and daughter as well as some neighbors on call to help out if necessary.

So this year, I am going to try to be different. I am going to try to have fun while I'm away. Sure, it's work, but at the end of a long day (and I mean long since they usually start at 6 a.m. and end after 5 p.m), there are parties to go to. There are cool people to see for drinks. There is also a nice hotel room that is clean and has the good premium cable TV stations. There is food that I don't have to cook or pay for available. The added bonus is I'm not pregnant this year like last. So my plan for Boston, I'm going to (try) look at this a little differently. Fingers crossed.

We're back

After 11 days in Dallas, we are back in Virginia. My sister and three year old niece Megan came back with us for three days, leaving 8 month Emma behind with my mother. It was a great visit, but it was also a tornado of noise and chaos having two three year olds in the house at the same time. My sister and I would just sit down after getting them situated with something only for one to run in complain and/or cry that they needed help with something or that the other had taken a toy/hit the other. It was really funny seeing them together teaching each other new bad habits. It's funny -- the house is more or less babyproofed for Andy, but I wasn't quite prepared for Megan as she did all sorts of things Andy wouldn't think of, like climbing on the banister or using the trash can as a stepstool to reach something. Clever little one.

Amazing, after three straight weeks of visiting family, either here or in Dallas, I don't have anything lined up with my side of the family until after my maternity leave ends in May. It's weird to think about. Meanwhile, I have dozens of great pictures. I have so many that it's taking ages to upload so I'll post more later.

Mark your calendar

Baby Meg slept six hours at a stretch last night, from about 10 p.m. to about 4 a.m. I wish I knew what trick it was other than having the whole family around and lots of activities. She's been sleeping in the pack and play in the room next to mine, connected by a bathroom. She's a noisy sleeper so it's better for me to have her in the next room so that I only hear her when she really needs me. The bonus is that room is right next to my parents' so my mother has been kind enough to be getting up for feedings as well.

The only downside is that Andy is sleeping in the room with me. He's in a crib (his choice) and it's easier to have him with me than worry Meg will wake him when she gets up, but it's taking him forever to wind down from the day so bedtime and nap time are quite a chore. Who knew I'd be worried about the three year old sleeping rather than the baby?

We've been in town a week now. It's been great to have such a long visit. My family has been incredibly hospitable and accommodating, but it will be nice get back to Bjorn as well as my own stuff and semblance of routine.