Hands Full.

Are you a parent with more than one child under 3? I bow to thee. I can barely hang on here with my (relatively easy) 2 year old. Some of our close friends have twin boys that are about to turn one on Halloween. I seriously am on the verge of tears when I watch them with those boys.

We hung out tonight with them- playing at the park, then back here for dinner and dancing. Julian loved it and it's so nice to see friends.











xo

One more pumpkin patch photo...

How could I forget, the bizarre image of the teenaged boy seated on a pumpkin using his laptop in the middle of the pumpkin patch. Plotting world pumpkin domination? What the $%#@?

Obligatory Pumpkin Patch Post

What the hell was I thinking?

Julian gets up from his nap and I pop out with "Hey, let's go to the pumpkin patch!" Jon, who usually sets me straight before I decide to do something this dumb hopped right on board "I was going to take him to a bike show, but great, let's go to the Pumpkin patch!"

He forgot to remind me that we'd sit in traffic to get to the pumpkin patch. He forgot to remind me that the parking lot would be overflowing into the next parking field, which was full of SUVs and license plates from afar. He forgot to remind me that people would be dragging their whining children and hissing under their breath "I am NOT hurting your hand, if you want me to hurt you I WILL," and the ever present "If you're not a good boy you won't get any popcorn." He forgot to remind me that this would not be the pumpkin patch of my childhood but would be the pumpkin patch of urbanites trying desperately to get a small glimpse of the countryside. He forgot to remind me that the animal barn would entail only a few caged animals that were clearly upset with all of the commotion.

So we went.

And it was fun.

Tractor hay ride.


Sad ducks.


The farm machinery climbing area. Do you like the backdrop? Yes, they're port-a-potties.


This guy had his kid by the hand and a giant gourd in the baby carrier


Pre-cut but at least sitting on the ground.


Cute.


And finally Julian found one to bring home...priceless.

BaBa and the Chiquitos.

Wow, what a few weeks. After Rachel left we had about 8 hours before my dad arrived. We had a great weekend with him and we all wound up happy, full, and exhausted.

For Julian's birthday we picked out a new bicycle (thanks for the idea Kathleen!) and my dad had it shipped here and put it together for him. I highly recommend this bike for toddlers. It teaches them to balance on the bicycle without training wheels or pedals so they transition to regular bikes much earlier and much more easily. There are wood versions too but we thought the metal would be better here in the rain. Julian was a bit nervous about it but that seems to be his nature when approaching new activities. He's already warming up to it. http://www.stridersports.com/video.html





Julian and my dad hit it off big time. My dad visited when J was 8 months old, but other than that the one time my dad visited it was with the entire family and I think he didn't have the energy to pry him away from my mom. Here are some shots of Julian and BaBa.








Julian jumped off this stool about 100 times. First "watch me!" then we'd watch. He'd land, laugh, and say "see that?" to each of us in turn. "Yes, Julian, we saw that..."


My dad let Julian splash in his post-shave water. My inner neurotic was bristling at the ickyness of his playing in a sink full of dirty dead skin. My mom thought it would only be gross if he drank it. God help me.


Nothing special here, just a cute shot.


Our other news is that we have to make another day care transition for Julian. The fabulous amazing and perfect in home day care he has been attending since spring is closing so the mom can get a full time desk job with benefits so her kids can get insurance. Once again thanks a freaking heap W.

After several nanny interviews, home daycare visits, and many many discussions, we decided to put him in a school (read: stable) called Chiquitos http://www.chiquitos.org/aboutchiq.html . It is full Spanish immersion with a great child-centered philosophy, and he'll be there 2 days a week. The grounds are great and it is only 4 kids to a teacher. As a matter of fact there are only 4 kids in his class period so it won't be some crazy scene like many of the typical day care situations. The main down side is that it is a half an hour drive each way. I guess I'll get to work on my Spanish CDs more...and join the ranks of those complaining about gas prices.

Are you kidding me?

Took Julian to the allergist this morning to discuss how it is best to approach the med management part of his asthma. It was a group practice and we took him to the pediatric specialist.

1. We waited over an hour for the doctor to come in.

2. There were NO toys in the waiting room. There were NO toys in the tiny room where they left us for 40 minutes (the nurse finally brought us 2 books...)

3. The doctor said to me "I'm just going to talk to you like you don't know anything." WHY? Are you so cookie cutter that you can't change your speech based on your audience? I know how the lungs work, I know how asthma medication works, I know what allergies are, and yes, my child is getting enough calcium.

4. The doctor kept talking about how NDs really don't approach things correctly with allergies and how he'd like to talk to me about how the testing we use isn't appropriate. Um, HELLO, we've been sitting here for an hour, how about we talk about MY CHILD? When I suggested we focus he said that we could talk about business at our next visit. How about you take me out to freaking LUNCH if you want to discuss it rather than billing Blue Cross.

5. FFS.

We got home after 2 1/2 hours, without even doing the allergy testing and big surprise JLEB was melting down with the nanny- wouldn't leave my side- cried inconsolably. We had some alone time with a bottle and poor bunny finally settled down enough for me to leave.

We've spent the week looking at day cares, making calls, and interviewing nannies as Julian's in home daycare situation is closing. Rachel left today and my dad is coming tonight.

Too. Much. Going. On.

xo!

Happy 2nd Birthday!!

Today Julian is 2.
If you're up for it, please leave him a birthday wish by clicking 'comments' below- I'm going to keep it for him!




Julian's birthday will forever be both happy and sad for me (and probably for him as well.) I think of his birth mother and how difficult this day must be. So today I wish her so much love and strength. I wish I could tell her how amazing a child her son is...maybe some day.

Everyone is asking how we're celebrating. Well, we're keeping it low key. His friends sang Happy Birthday at the park yesterday and this morning we let him eat as many eggs with spinach and tomato as he wanted. He actually ate so much he told us he had a tummy ache. His belly was so big it popped out of his jammies.

He got a balloon, a dump truck and a few books. Bike to come next week as a gift from BB and BaBa. He's going to go ape-shit (Julian, not BaBa.)

Always the ham.



We have a house guest- the daughter of my sister's best friend from CT. It's been super fun to have her here and she even made scratch spelt challah for us on shabbat along with chicken and green beans. Now that is a good guest.



My only new news is that this afternoon we go to Henry's birthday party and then start interviewing new day care providers as our fabulous, perfect, bilingual in home day care we've had J in for 4 months is closing. I'm super bummed about this...but should have seen it coming.

Here are some fresh photos.

Rachel and Julian mapping a route.


Birthday book- trucks and diggers, of course.


Smoothie.


My bad.


Came home from work to this cuteness this week.


The last popsicle of summer.


This photo reminds me of a bar in a Western gettin' ready to draw.

Reptile Man.

So I'm finally recovered from vacation. Got home to a week of exhaustion that I haven't felt since before I had my surgery. From now on, no vacation. What? You heard me, no vacation. Anyone that loves me can come here and I'm happy to pitch in for plane, train and bus tickets. I'm happy to take a week off. But if y'all want to see the Julian it's either here or Jon's going alone- until Julian is 3.

This weekend our adoption agency had their annual "reunion" the name of which is a bit confusing to me as I don't know anyone but the staff. Nevertheless we loaded up the car and drove to east crack of nowhere to a suburban play park just in time to see the hired entertainment. "Reptile man" unloaded his crates of snakes, snapping turtles, lizards etc. Oh joy. Julian had had enough within about 8 minutes. And tell me, really, wouldn't you expect "reptile man" to be a guy with scales tattooed all over his body, a slit in his tongue and some weird creepy contact lenses? Reptile keeper maybe. Reptile man? I think not.

Then home for a nap and straight to a bbq when J got up. One woman was talking about her 3 year old daughter sitting in the tub scooched up to the faucet. When the mom went to turn the water off the girl said "NO mommy, I'm washing my vagina!" At which point another mom pops out with "Wow, I didn't figure that out until I was 30!" I'm still cracking up.

Julian is recovering from another upper respiratory tract infection and a bout of asthma. Another round of steroids and his nebulizer every 4-6 hours. He is such a trooper. (BTW just looked it up and apparently you can use trooper or trouper. Who knew?!) Anyway...he's feeling much better now. The roughest part is that the meds turn him into a frantic ranting raving running jumping spinning twirling lunatic. Getting him down is virtually impossible until he just collapses. I imagine it is like when you have that one last shot of espresso even though you know you shouldn't and they 'oops' make it a quadruple.



It doesn't keep him from wanting to snuggle with mama during milk time though, thank goodness.





Here are a few shots Sharon took at the mountain last week. She calls the first one "Sleeping Boy with Brocolli."







xo
-s