spoon me!

I love watching kids learn to eat. Shoving food in their mouths - even yogurt - by the fistful. Spaghetti sauce from ear to ear. Oatmeal becomes a hair product. And every meal requires a bath immediately after. The dogs love it too but for different reasons.

So we just got rid of the last of the formula and the baby bottles, which was kind of a sad moment for me, and now baby girl has decided she's ready to use her spoon. Judging by the amount of yogurt on her face (Tagg calls it a yogurt goatee) and chest, I'll get to savor the food discovery dining disaster era for a little bit longer.

craft day

It was a hot, rainy, humid day today so Tagg spent a lot of time making stuff. First off? Raiding mommy's jewelry-making stash (back in the day, before I had kids, I used to make these really cool rings with wire and beads. They were awesome.) He decided he wanted to make some necklaces for mommy (how cute is that?!) so he picked out the beads and actually threaded them all on the wire by himself. Pretty amazing. Just had to help him wire the ends together to close them.

He was so excited to show me his creations, and insisted on putting them on my wrist himself. One is Lightning McQueen (the red one, duh) and the other one is "bwack beads." They're both a little more bracelet size than necklace size and a little big at that. If I ever gain a buttload of weight they'll be perfect! But they are, by far, the best jewelry I've ever received in my whole life next to my wedding ring.

His other project? Painting. I have always loved Tagg's paintings. There are a lot that I've kept because I want to frame them. Someday when I have a bigger house where the walls aren't full of family photos and stuff. His pictures always seems to have some deeper meaning than a sub-three-year-old should be creating. When he finished this one, I was like what is it buddy? "It's the ocean, mommy. It's water." Of course it is. And it's gorgeous.

I figured since it was technically a present for us, we'd put one of our anniversary pictures in it and let him keep it in his room. Although I'm kind of bummed. I LOVE this frame!

i like myself

I picked up a book for Tagg the other day at Barnes & Noble - I Like Myself by Karen Beaumont. I liked the title. The illustration was darling. And I like to shop at real bookstores. I'm old fashioned that way.

I read it to Tagg tonight and it was such a lovely story. A happy rhyming tale of accepting and celebrating yourself - when you're fast or when you're slow, no matter how you look or what you do, regardless of what others think of you. Obviously a great message for children, especially when they enter school and have to deal with all of the challenges of social acceptance, bullies, cliques, names. How did we ever survive?

I heard a singer on a kids' radio program the other day. He was doing a sing-a-long with parents and children and he asked, "How many of you can sing?" Every single child's hand shot up in the air, and not one adult raised their hand. "How funny," he mused. "How is that every kid in the room can sing and not one parent can." I think it's sad, but I know my hand would have been firmly glued to my side.

And then I started thinking about adult me, and how I wish someone would tell me all of these great things about myself every day. That I wish I really and truly liked myself. That when I look in the mirror I didn't wish I had a smaller butt, perfect skin, better legs, different hair. I wish I didn't think I should be a better friend, a better wife, a better parent, a better employee, a faster runner. I should get involved with a charity, clean that storage room, finish my book, dust under the fridge, plant my own garden, paint the hallway, detail the car, hand-make some toys for the kids...seriously! When does it end? When did this begin?

I would love to celebrate all of the things that make me, well...me. I want to enjoy all of my features, flaws, quirks and cool shit, not wish them away. I think I'm going to read this book a lot. As much for me as for Tagg and Sloane. And it might become my new favorite birthday present for my girls. Seems like the perfect gift.

green thumb

About a month ago, Tagg and I decided we were going to grow some stuff. I had all these empty planters sitting beside the garage in the driveway, a sad tribute to the plethora of plants I've managed to kill over the years. It seemed like they needed a purpose again. So off we went to Home Depot and picked out some plants and seeds. Let me just tell you. If you haven't ever taken a 2 1/2 year old to a rack of seed packages and said "let's pick out some things to plant," you're in for a treat. Based on his choices we'd have little planters growing corn on the cob (can you picture a big ol' corn stalk in this pot?!), pumpkins, and chamomile. I did not know he was a tea aficionado. I, on the other hand, was determined to finally grow a functional herb garden so we also had oregano, basil, tarragon, thyme and coriander. Plus a couple of tomato and pepper plants, and a few strawberry plants.

We got our plants tucked happily into their new homes. Tagg was a big help with the dirt and the shovel. He was trying to bury the plants more than anything but hey...that's kind of the point, right? A few days later he planted the herb seeds and a couple of zucchini plants with Nana and Papa. We water the plants almost every day and check their progress. No plant fatalities yet, I'm happy to report.

Tagg is always genuinely amazed every time we peek under the leaves at our tomatoes he says, "Look Mommy!! They growed! They growed!" Thanks to Tagg's green thumb, it actually looks like we might have some fresh tomatoes this summer.

4th of july

For the first time in almost 15 years, Scott and I didn't spend the 4th of July in Lake Powell. Very strange. That place has a vibe that is addictive and when you can't be there, you get a little twitchy. We made do with a boating day at Jordanelle. The water was 55 so we did a quick jump in and out. Tagg thought that was pretty funny so he made Scott do it 3 times. Poor guy. He might finally be recovered! Sloane still doesn't like her life jacket but she finally succumbed to the soothing vibrations of the boat and napped for awhile under a homemade tent of sarongs, beach towels and a lifejacket.

We went to a fabulous small-town parade in Park City on Monday. Any time you can wrap a truck in blue tarps, stick a sculling boat on top with a few bored 15 year olds "rowing" and call it a float, I think you're set. Tagg really liked the horses, the fire trucks and the skier, snow boarders who were doing tricks on a trampoline.

Our friends Jen and Chris have a friend with this amazing place right on Main Street. It was huge! Like huge, huge. We had expected this little, bitty yard and were treated to a place that was practically a park. There must have been a coupe of hundred people there over the course of the parade.

Cookies! Cupcakes! Anything with red, white and blue sprinkles? Tagg was all over it! Treats and water balloons make a three year old pretty happy...even without a nap!

iv anyone?

I got an epic case of food poisoning on Friday night. Well technically it was about 4am Saturday and I puked my guts out for about 6 hours, laying on the cold tile floor in the bathroom between bouts of hurling. It was awful. I haven't felt that rotten or sick since we were in Mexico about 12 years ago and I got the montezuma's on the last night of our trip. It's the worst, most miserable feeling. I think everyone's been there at least once, right, so no details required.

So Saturday morning, Scott's wrangling the little ones since our boating plans were scrapped in favor of a pool day (my fault), and I'm laying in bed, shaking uncontrollably, feeling like death warmed over, looking out the windows at this perfect beautiful sunny day while Ghost (yep, the one with Patrick Swayze and Demi and Whoopie) and a Supernanny marathon are playing on TV. That sucks.

So Natalie and Alek came up to go boating/pooling and Alek talks me into doing a saline IV. He is a paramedic but seriously? This is how it goes down:

Alek: "You look terrible."
Me: "I feel terrible. Better but still terrible. I haven't puked in like an hour."
Alek: "You should try a saline IV. You're probably really dehydrated. It will make you feel better soon."
Me: "Ok."
Alek: breaks into a happy dance like this is the first time anyone was actually miserable enough to let him hook them up on an IV.
Me: too wrecked to be more than mildly nervous about the happy dance and subsequent giggles of pure joy while he's poking me with a needle and hanging an IV bag from the bedpost with a phone cord.
Alek: hee-hee-hee
Me: (an hour later) "You're right. I actually feel better!" And then I got up and went to the pool. I still felt a little trashed till about mid-day on Sunday but at least I was functional! Definite improvement over death-warmed-over!
Me: Alek is a miracle worker! His stock just went up another notch.

nobody puts baby in a corner

We put her in the closet! No, wait. It's a good story! We went up to Park City on Friday night to stay at the Canyons for the weekend. We got bumped from our original place and upgraded to some palatial, 3 bedroom condo at Escala. It was HUGE! So huge that our closet was like a little bedroom. So we parked Sloane's crib in there and she had her own little bedroom for the trip. Perfect!

It was nice and toasty in our room in spite of the perfect temps in Park City, and we could not for the life of us figure out how to get the thermostat to actually stop pumping hot air into our room (it's not easy to sleep when it's 87...especially when it's 60 outside!) so little nugget got to sleep in her dud.

On Sunday night, we opened the doors to let the room cool off and when we went in to put Tagg down, there were not one but two bats flying around the vaulted ceiling! Awesome. Bats. In our room. We finally got them out. I like to think it was my awesome bat call from the balcony - eeeee, eeeee, eeeee. I may be mocked for that one for awhile!