Special guest star

Bratz dolls

My neice (sister) had an adorable birthday party at one of those girls salons. Meggie wasn't quite having it, complete with peeing in her pants on the floor of the bathroom. But she got it together and was enjoying herself by the end. My sister's kids had a blast. I think kids aged four and older did better than the littler girls. Hilarious. Check out the little one on the left. With that scowl, she reminded me of a figure skate out for blood.

Corporate relocation

We live in the land of corporate relocation. Seriously. I thought DC was bad with all the congressional jobs that came and went with whoever was in power. There was also a lot of military moves with people coming into the region. But I've never seen anything like this. Our good friends who moved in when we did and have kids about the same age? Yeah, moving away 11 months later. I can't imagine having to do that. I also can't imagine the expense of all this on companies. Seriously.

The amount of money companies are spending to move people is insane. So these nice folks will probably have $100,000 spent on the move inbetween travel for the family, realtor's fees, packing expenses and general relocation costs. And all this for people they just moved less than a year ago. It seems like a lot of money when everyone keeps crying poverty and not enough money for jobs and stuff.

Another family I know is moving to Asia for work. So in addition to the probably $100,000 on the general move (realtor's fees, moving costs, etc.), they also have to pay for private school in China for the kids, trips back and forth and then moving the family back at the end. I think they said it will cost the company about $300,000 a year for them to live in China. Wow.

Granted, these are mid to high level executives so not your average worker. But still. I'd love to see a study on whether all this money spent on relocation is worth it for the company. And I'm not just saying this because my friends are moving. Okay, maybe I am.

USA is awesome!

He says.

Happy Independence Day

Lost tooth #4

Lost tooth!

Andy lost his fourth tooth today. He has now lost all four on the bottom and the top middle two are wiggly. We are at my parents' ranch near Brownwood this weekend (or near Crawford as Dad likes to say). Funny, of his four lost teeth, two were lost away from home, one in Australia last summer and now this one.

Good thing the tooth fairy travels. The going rate is $2 in our house. Is that what he pays at your house? Bjorn though about giving him a $5 but that sets the bar pretty high in case neither of us has that kind of cash in our pocket some evening.

Feeding the dolphins

Alt title: How Sea World got us to pay to give their animals dinner

Let's be real though - worth every penny, and not just because Frances bought the fish. It was totally cool. And what totally cool animals. Andy didn't want to feed them but spent a good 25 minutes just watching. I was impressed at that too actually.

The dolphins were pretty amazing. The fish come in packs of four so they would flirt with us for four fish and move on. Smart cookies. I bet they would totally work a room at a singles bar, too.

Sea World

Let the record reflect

See, she does occasionally sleep in a bed. Sure it's MY bed. I will move her upstairs before I go to sleep, but a dollar says she is back her before morning.

My very restless girl

Give us liberty or at least a DVD

We went to San Antonio for a volunteer gig and took time to check out the Alamo. We went when it opened at 10 on Sunday and it was still really crowded. And hot. Let's not forget how hot Texas can be in late June. The kids acted about as badly as you would expect from kids who have been up way past their bedtime two nights in a row and now have to be in the heat with all these people, thank you very much. I did learn some new facts like how the structure in this picture didn't have a roof until long past the time of the battle. I also learned that despite Andy's progress in lots of areas like reading and bike riding, he can still be a six-year-old.

He can ride a bike!

Quite a year for this kid. He learned to read, swim and now ride a bike. He is riding his old, little bike instead of his newer bike. I think the smaller size has been easier to start on although the older bike was cheap quality to begin with. I bought it three years ago when Andy gave up his binky. I believe it was $25 at Target. I think we have gotten our money's worth.

My very restless girl

Seriously, this kid can fall asleep anywhere. Of course only on her own terms when properly exhausted.

Trial and Error

Andy and Barrett didn't believe me when I explained the box to the new lawn mower would break down in the pool and would not be a sufficient boat.

School pictures

The kids' school pictures turned out much better. My scanning skills, obviously, need a lot of work.

Happy Father's Day

Chocolate can be painful

On the go

Last weekend, my cousins visited from Austin. The kids had a blast! Margaret did consent to wearing a skirt in this picture, which is an upgrade over the nakedness she was rocking minutes before.

Bjorn has been commenting that I never seem to update this anymore. Part of the problem is that the kids are home for the summer. I have a sitter, but they're still bounding into my office occasionally, especially in the evenings. They also have decided that if the sun is only going to set for like 8 hours a day, that's about all the sleep they need, thanks. Mommy, however, disagrees.

I also got a new computer a few months ago and it's proven to be a pain to get my camera to upload pictures. Yada yada yada, too lazy, busy. Well, I just discover Blogger has added a new mobile upload feature. Watch out, Internets! I'm going to be going crazy. Maybe.

Test

Trying bloggers mobile post feature.

Worst, most adorable kindergarten song ever

He can swim, ya'll

Andy can swim. Seriously. It's totally awesome, too. Turns out eight months of weekly swim lessons can actually lead to something.

We had a hard time getting into swimming. Andy didn't want his head under water at all, even in the bath, so swimming lessons were stress inducing there at the beginning. But we worked through it and the folks at the swim school are pretty amazing. I signed him up for swim team this summer and I've been a little nervous about it because they said kids needed to be able to swim 25 feet and I knew that 15 feet which he can swim didn't exactly add up to 25.

But then this Saturday, my sister and her kids and another friend came over and he somehow put all the pieces together and started swimming. It was amazing. The conditions have to be right, of course, he needs his goggles and he can't really take a breath during his stroke or anything, but he can confidently go from one side of the pool to the other and he's loving it. I'll admit I was nervous about getting a pool, but considering how much we used it this weekend and how hot it is in Dallas already, I think it was a good call.

Meg, however, still not swimming, but she thinks she can. So I've been making her wear a swim vest type thing so she floats. She'll probably be swimming on her own by the end of the summer and another session of swim school, but for now I've got to make her keep her head above water.

Ironwoman

We went to Houston this weekend to cheer on my sister Mary who was competing in a triathlon. I must say, wow, those folks were really damn hard. Houston was a terrible venue what with the 92 degree weather and 95 percent humidity. Apparently a lot of people had to drop out during the day due to dehydration. Mary was amazing. She got through the 2.6 mile swim in an hour and a half and the 112 mile bike ride in under eight hours. Then she started to run and she developed a foot injury that made it nearly impossible to keep moving on it. The diagnosis at the time was a stress fracture or a split tendon. She made it eight miles (!) on a broken foot before she finally stopped. WOW. That's some serious determination. I was so amazed and impressed with her and all the other athletes. They are amazing!

I must say, I was inspired. I would love to do a marathon, but I'm not sure that's in my cards. I may run a 5k or something soon though. That's about my speed.

The day before checking out the bike transition spot.

The night before dinner with Team Queso at Olive Garden. There were about 6 friends from Austin and then 6 family members that came to cheer her on. It was awesome.

Pre-race decorations on her door. We're very clever using post-it notes and Post-it flags.

We waited for Mary at the 90 mile marker on the bike route. It was long and sweaty waiting but amazing to watch everyone. We also got to talking to a lot of the other families and friends of participants. It was so neat seeing all the support, too.

Our spot on the turn before mile 90.

Mary at the bike-out transition spot.

Mary beginning the run.

This is at the end, a picture of her damaged feet. She'll find out this week what the damage is and whether she can train to compete in the Arizona Ironman this fall.

Ironwoman

This weekend I am off to see my sister compete in an Ironman triathalon. I am most impressed by this level of dedication considering thought of watching her run/bike/swim for 17 hours makes me tired much less the thought of actually running/biking/swimming for all that time. I don't care if she finishes the darn thing, but the thought that she's set such an impressive goal for herself and she's been working so hard to get there has me filled with all sorts of awe and inspiration. Go Mary!

My new toy

For Mother's Day, Bjorn (upon my advice), bought me a composter. I had seen my friend's and thought it was pretty darn cool. It also, sadly, was pretty darn expensive so it's going to be a combination Mother's Day/birthday present. It arrived today and we set it up. It's already churning some banana peels, coffee grounds and some orange rinds. You are also required to put in baking soda and saw dust pellets, you know, to help avert the smell. It's pretty cool although I hope it's not overly complicated to use. I like that I can put it in the garage so I don't have to traipse to the back of the yard (and of course, that I have a garage!)

Things in Virginia have been dramatic with two surgeries in two weeks for two members of Bjorn's immediate family. I am thankful to report that both seem to be on the mend.

Things here, however, have been quiet. Work is quiet at the moment (for me, not everyone--they're all busy with a system implementation which is probably why my life is quiet) and so it's weird to be in the house all alone during the day sometimes. I'm only technically working 25 hours a week, but I've always gone well above that and with the new blur of the home/home office, it's even easier to just log in and doing another hour while the kids watch the Backyardigans before bed. 

Fortunately, it's giving me an opportunity to reach out to some neighbors and meet others who work from home just for companionship in between conference calls. I do love my new set up, but I really miss my water cooler talk. It's also hard sometimes to feel part of a team when I'm off by myself. Of course, all this is just talk because in a few months, I am taking on a new responsibility and I know I'm going to be really busy.

I do love the freedom my new work from home set up affords. Like today, I picked both kids up at three and we played on the playground for an hour. Then we went to the library, made a craft and were home in time for a playdate. I love that my kids can do that now and we're not just pulling into the driveway at 6 p.m. like we used to. I love that we live in the kind of neighborhood where the kids can run over for an impromptu playdate.

Bjorn says I'm not very good at patting myself on the back and it's true. Sure, in the past year we have moved cross country, traveled with two small children to Australia, lived apart for three months, sold a house, bought a house, lived with my parents briefly, moved to a new town, started a child in public school, quit our jobs and got new ones, had my first mammogram and made a bunch of new friends, some of whom are awesome. So after all that, when things are quiet, I just don't know what to do with myself sometimes!

This and that

When we were looking at houses, Bjorn really wanted a pool. My problem with the pool was I was nervous the kids would get into it when I wasn't around and that shit just scares me. So we started only looking for houses that had a separate pool fence so that it was separate from the rest of the yard. That meant the kids could have a yard and still have a separate pool. The first house we put an offer on did have that already. Then that fell through and we fell in love with our house. It didn't have a separate pool fence, but it looked it did at one time. So we made a deal with ourselves that we would add that fence.

So we did! And it looks great. Now I can open the door to the backyard and send the kids out to play without having to supervise the pool area. We were also able to padlock the pool with a combination lock. I feel better already. Now we need to find some toys to put in the new fenced area.

This picture is evidence I have the coolest mom ever. We had tickets to see the supremely hilarious David Sedaris at SMU a few weeks ago. I stopped to pick up mom and we prepared drinks to put in our purses to have at intermission. She's just awesome. And so was the show.

Also awesome? These guys. The other night, we had a terrible thunderstorm so they both converged in our bed. I snuck out to watch the news about Bid Laden and came back to this picture. I think I love them more than ever. Plus, sleeping children are sometimes superior to awake ones that stand over me in the bathroom stall asking if I'm done yet over and over and over and over again.

Said thunderstorms produced a ton of rain. Our creek is a major artery during times of storms so Meggie and I went down to check it out. Check out her little fashion statement, too. Who doesn't wear a striped dress with striped pants of a different vintage with a raincoat to match?

Glasses

Andy got his first pair of glasses yesterday. He looked really cute. I'm glad I took a picture at Wal-Mart when we picked them up as they are already lost. Seriously, Internets, how is that even possible?

We have been retracing our steps to the Subway where we ate lunch, the couch store where we stopped to realize we should hold off to afford the better leather couch that we really want to the outdoor play place where we looked in vain for just a little bitty wooden playhouse to go in the backyard instead of the massive play structures they seem to sell. Nothing.

I am hopeful the furniture place will eventually find it tucked under something or the unfriendly lady at the play place will find them on one of her play structures (no answer from her today either because its Sunday or pouring down rain).

He looked pretty darn cute in his glasses, too. He's got an astigmatism, which isn't that big a deal, except one eye is stronger than the other and you need to balance those out with classes or run the risk the weaker eye will stop developing normally (apparently bad). Fortunately, on the advice of the opthamologist, the glasses we just a little over $100 so we can afford to get another pair if we have to. I may wait a week though and hope the others show up. I'm glad I didn't invite in the special lenses. I figured he wouldn't hold on to this first pair long. I had no idea it would be THIS short.

Egg drop soup

Andy's school had a really neat project last week. They were to take a raw egg and somehow make a 7 inch by 7 inch by 7 inch container to house it safely. The container would then be dropped off a ladder by a teacher to see if the egg survived. Bjorn and he worked on it and had several different cool designs. The one they finally settled on was a square box filled with fruit loops. They practiced by dropped it out the game room window into the driveway (downside, now he knows the game room windows can be opened).

I am happy to report that his egg survived. It was all pretty adorable. You could tell the girl containers because most of them were heavily decorated with colors and other appliques. Some designs were quite clever. The most common container was Tupperware followed by a box. Many kids violated the size rule, but hey, it's kindergarten and not a science project so no eliminations. Many of those didn't do any better.

Bjorn wanted to know how many survived and you really couldn't tell except some kids were crying (I presume their eggs broke) and on some, you could really hear the smack when they hit the ground so you just knew it didn't survive.

Kitties

Before Bjorn and I had been married a year, we got two adorable kittens that came to live with us in our rental townhouse in Alexandria. They were small and hyper. They made a ton of noise and climbed on all the curtains. But they were ours, an earlier decision in our marriage and we loved them. They were my babies before I had babies. Sadly for them, they became somewhat second class citizens when the kids arrived, but they still loved us and now there were more of us to love them.

I am sad to report that one of them, Coltrane, died last weekend. The whole thing is sort of surreal. She's just gone. She had been ill with a bladder infection a few weeks earlier, but since then, she'd put on weight and was becoming more adventurous again. Then she had an attack of some kind and died on the way to the emergency veterinary hospital. My sister Mary, the vet, says it's almost certainly unrelated. I will miss her.

When in Roam

When we moved it, I put a gate on Meg's door to keep her from getting up in the night falling down the stairs trying to come to our room. Eventually, we started opening the gate at night so she could wake up and go to the bathroom, or more likely, come to our room. So when I steam cleaned the carpets a few weeks ago, I took the gate off and put it in the attic. Now she is free to roam the house after I think I've put her to bed. I find I miss that gate, but she's going to have to grow up some time, I suppose.

This is her asleep in our bed. She'll sneak past us and I'll find her asleep there.

Lately, I find she's sneaking out after I tuck her in and I'll find her asleep in random spots. It almost looks like a crime scene.


Here she is asleep in between the kitchen and breakfast room.

 

Asleep in her room but on her chair wearing a leotard.



Shocker - asleep in her own bed.



Asleep next to Bjorn. So cute.



Here is a tease - she was faking being asleep which I didn't know until I took the picture. She then gleefully jumped up to see herself in my phone.



Coffee and other hazards

Last Monday after spending the weekend in Washington, D.C., for work, I eagerly began a conference call with a guy in Boston when I spilled coffee on my laptop computer. I didn't freak, it WAS an important call, so I just slowly dabbed up what I could and kept going. Afterward, I called my IT person who is the nicest, most nonjudgmental IT person I've ever met and explained what I had done. "Oh. Oh, my." That's how I knew I was screwed.

Per her advice, I unplugged the battery and all the keys, dried the board and waited. In the meantime, I went to Best Buy and bought a new computer.

I needed one anyway. My little Acer laptop wasn't really appropriate for every day work. I had bought it as a personal computer a couple of years ago, but converted it to full-time business use last year when we moved and I started consulting. Now that I've gotten a permanent gig working from home, I needed to upgrade to something bigger and better. The new computer is beautiful and gorgeous -- mostly the monitor, of course. It's huge. Bjorn convinced me to spend the extra $59 for the super big HD monitor which makes a difference. At first, it was almost too bright, but now I've sort of gotten used to it and I really love it!

So to bury the lead, I now have a permanent gig, working from home, traveling occasionally. It's a totally awesome set up doing a project I really like. The only downside of working from home is getting disconnected when I'm on my own all day so I've asked to be included in staff meetings and I'm making a point to stay in touch via phone instead of e-mail. The perk is I have no commute, except to take the kids to and from school really, which gives me a lot more time for the rest of my life. It's also incredibly flexible in terms of the kids. I am super excited that Andy can actually do swim club this summer. In prior years, I was always working so he could never really go. I do miss the energy that comes with an office though so I'm going to find some interesting coffee shops where people congregate just for the social aspect of getting out once in a while. I also found out a neighbor just took a job working from home three days a week so I will have a buddy on the block to become my work water cooler.

Fortunately, I've been able to get about 4/5 of the keyboard keys back on. Typing is a mess still as putting these keys back on is like rebuilding an antique clock -- lots of small pieces that have to be painstakingly put back together.

Milestone

Meg is no longer a baby. That's been true for some time now, but the signs are all over right now. Recently we moved her out of her Britax Roundabout car seat for a booster seat. I wasn't in any hurry particularly, but after she threw up last time due to strep, the smell was sort of imbedded in the straps and I realized I was just done. She loves her new seat. It's a Graco booster with a little pink. It's adorable.

There are other signs, too. The changing table and crib sheets are in the garage to give away. She is mostly only in diapers at night now so her diaper trash can is mostly unused. Her sippy cup to regular cup usage is about 80 percent. When properly motivated, she can pick out her own clothes and get dressed, often wearing the shoes on the right feet.

Now don't get me wrong, I am thrilled with her progress and that she's getting more interactive and interesting (and opinionated) by the day. I am thrilled that I will not be pregnant again or have another baby. But my baby is growing up and I'm not exactly sure how I feel about that.