Oh Happy Day

Today marks the first day of fall! Here are the top five reasons fall is my favorite season...


The color of fall leaves is so magnificent. I was looking through the recent Pottery Barn catalog when the headline, Inspired Seasonal Decorating, caught my eye. After thumbing through the first few pages I thought to myself...I am so boring. Each room bursted with bright fall colors, complete with the name of which Pottery Barn paint color was used for the walls. Then, about midway through the catalog I found a bathroom done in dark woods, Stonehenge like wall color and wonderfully fluffy white towels. Perfect, I thought to myself, so boring and...me!


There is no feast quite like the Thanksgiving feast. It doesn't get much better than wonderful food, family, and...Black Friday the next day to kick off the holiday season!!!



I absolutely adore little trick-or-treaters! Especially the ones you look at and for the life of you, you can't figure out what the heck they are supposed to be. This year will be a bittersweet Halloween as Lauren and Annie are both a little old to trick-or-treat and risk remarks like, "Aren't you a little old to trick-or-treat?" I remember when I was about nine, maybe ten, we were at one of those family themed pizza parlors. I ran to the giant ball pit ready to dive in when, ball pit security stopped me and said, "Sweetheart you're too tall, can't let you in." A little piece of me died that day...I loved the ball pit. The preteen and early teens years are such a tough age, more so for girls I think. You can wear a bra and shave your legs now, but you still love to do cartwheels and...trick-or-treat!



What's better than taking your kids to the pumpkin patch to pick out the perfect pumpkin? We go to the same place each year. There are several in our area, but we were lucky to find the one we go to while on a field trip years ago with the girls preschool. With a hay maze, hayride, a cider making exhibit, cider donuts and tons of other stuff, we end up making a day of it...muddy shoes and all!



I love hot apple cider, made fresh from crisp fall apples. What a perfect way to warm up on a chilly autumn evening. I just wish I had a fireplace to enjoy it by!

Sisters

When I was pregnant the question I was asked most often, aside from, "When are you due?" and "Can I rub your belly?", was, "What do the girls think about this?" People always asked this question with an underlying tone insinuating doom. I think this was in part because the girls were eleven and thirteen years old, and that is not the most easygoing age to say the least. But I always found this unsettling and, well, strange. After all, from the moment I told the girls I was pregnant they were ecstatic. They were the ones dragging me to ogle over tiny baby clothes and test out all the annoying baby gadgets. And, every time either of them had extra money, they would go buy something for "the baby." As sweet as this was, I always told them they didn't have to keep buying her things...but they wanted too! And I remember from the time I could actually feel her move, we had a nightly ritual of laying on the bed, huge pregnant belly exposed, just waiting for a kick. The further along I got though, the cute little kicks turned into those huge rolls where you can practically make out body parts...that they found a little disturbing. Some time later on I was talking to a coworker who explained that when she told her teenage daughter she was expecting, she never heard the end of comments like, "Oh, great, a baby is going to be so annoying!" "Why did you have to get pregnant now?" So, I began to worry that all the new would wear off. Probably about the time we brought her home and she serenaded us with the ear piercing cry of a newborn. Or, maybe it would be the first time she spit up all over them or they had to change yet another diaper. But, almost seven months later, the new still hasn't worn off...much to the contrary. They still fight over her and insist the other has "had her longer." Claire definitely has no shortage of people to love her...and more importantly, to fix her hair (Click on the pictures and look closely at the hairdo, courtesy of Lauren)!

A Minor Rite of Passage

So, Lauren went to a dance this past Saturday. This was one of those bittersweet moments as a mother. Kind of like when you look at your daughter and for the first time realize she is no longer a little girl. And, about the same time you look down and go, "Oh my god you have cleavage!" "If I have to tell you to pull your shirt up one more time, I am going to staple it to your chest!" Anyway, after the dance our conversation went something like this:

Me: "How was the dance, did you have a good time?"

Lauren: "Yeah, it was fun!"

Me: "Was the music good, what did they play?"

Lauren: "Just normal music." "You wouldn't know any of it."

Me: "Oh, yeah, the kind that makes me want to beat my head against the wall and stick sharp objects in my ears to deafen myself."

Lauren: "Oh god mom."

Me: "Did you dance?"

Lauren: "Kind of, I guess."

Me: "With a boy, because you know your father and I..."

Lauren: "No mom, we all danced together, in a group."

Me: "Okay...cool!"

Lauren: "Can I go again next Saturday?"



Oh man...these are the times I wish she was homely and would rather stand in the corner and pick her nose. I remember when I was pregnant and about ready to pop, Lauren and I were driving while having a conversation similar to the one above. The song Letter to Me by Brad Paisley came on the radio. If you've never heard the song, I've added it to my playlist, along with John Mayer's Daughters. Anyway, I'll blame it on the hormones associated with pregnancy, but of course I got all teary...okay fine I balled my eyes out and proceeded to have the, "You really don't need to grow up quite so fast" talk. As complicated as our adult lives get, I certainly would not want to be thirteen again in these times. Seems no matter what you do as a parent, they still come home at least once a week asking, "What is blank?", or, "What does it mean to blank?" To which I respond, "That's it, we're heading to Pennsylvania to join the Amish!" And yes, I am quite aware they would not let us within ten miles. "But they don't have Abercrombie there do they?" "No, which is precisely my point!" *sigh* So, apparently Lauren will be going to the dance again this coming weekend. And as I told her, "Just remember, you never know if I am sitting outside in an undercover car watching your every move...just kidding." Or am I...

Claire Expands Her Social Circle

Annie spent the night with her friend Marianne this past Friday and when I went to pick her up, Claire made a friend, too! Wyatt was born the first of March, just two days after Claire. I remember once February came, it was like a race to the finish line for both Marianne's mom and me. We were both constantly asking the girls, "Has she had her baby yet?" The girls both hoped that we would go into labor at the same time so they could "hang out" at the hospital together. Anyway, this was Wyatt and Claire's first meeting, but they seemed to be equally fascinated with each other. I see playdates in their near future! Hopefully this is a sign that Claire will not be antisocial like her mother!

Mommy Needs a Time Out!

So, the other day I was close to a mommy meltdown, okay fine, I had a mommy meltdown. Nobody was necessarily behaving badly, except for me, I just needed a breather. Why do so many mothers never talk about their bad mommy moments? As if they're kept secret we will continue to believe they have some amazing threshold to the insanity that is raising children. That's why I love the straight talk of Heather B. Armstrong of dooce.com. Love her or hate her, which is usually the case, you have to appreciate her candid talk about parenthood. For instance, in yesterday's post (read it here) she talked about her hate of being crafty. It reminded me of the time my mother bought Lauren, at age two, real oil paints and proceeded to tell me how I had stifled her budding inner artist because I didn't allow her to run around the house paint brush in hand and adorn everything in her path. Anyway, I realized that in the last six months I have only spent, at the most, four hours away from Claire. So, Adele and Annie were kind enough to take Claire down to the park for a bit so I could enjoy the sound of silence, all twenty minutes of it. They took along the camera and captured some great shots. It was a nice, bright and sunny afternoon, but seriously, I am so ready for summer to be over. Bring on the rain already! I noticed, green is definitely Claire's color...don't ya think?

Show Us Your Pearly...White

Claire's first tooth made it's appearance just one day shy of her turning six months old. I forgot how hard this teething thing was! I cried right along with her as the days passed and I kept checking those telltale swollen gums to find nothing more than...swollen gums. But we both lived to tell about it and here she is showing it off! Seems I'm a little late in my reporting though as she now has her second tooth which proved to be much less traumatic for her. And while we're on the subject...does that baby gum numbing stuff actually do anything? I think every parent of a teething baby has a tube of this stuff or at least runs to the store at midnight in a rage of teething fury to buy some, but c'mon, does it ever really help? I remember slathering the stuff all over Lauren and Annie's gums and thinking the same thing, "uh, when does it start working and make the baby go to sleep?"