Woznation

It is a big event when daddy gets home. Wil use to just run to the door and wait – but now Evie can crawl after him.  Wil has caught on and now waits for Evie and shows her the way, via crawling.

Around the Island.

Down the home stretch.

Barney always gets first dibs at hugs and kisses.  I have been trying to get a few good pictures of when Phil is actually home – but usually by that time I am immersed in making dinner and/or cleaning up from dinner and lighting isnt that great.  Its a hard moment to catch – but one we treasure every day.

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So I was on a wait list for a garden in like early 2011 well before we even officially moved here.  They said the wait list was 5 years – and I almost didnt even put my name down, but did just in case. Welp – in 2014 – I got the call!! And Phil and I have a garden for the summer.  We inherited a very overgrown lot, but I guess most of them were overgrown considering it was April.

The first day I went to check it out, I thought Id get right to work and pull up all the weeds….in a dress…without gloves…and 2 awake children.  I made a small dent in the weeds before I pulled up a SNAKE.  I immediately packed up the kids and thought my gardening days were over for the rest of my life.  But luckily, I had a big strong man come back with me later that weekend.  After the proper attire, proper tools, proper naps times, and proper snake wrangling personnel, we made progress on the plot:

We found another one! We named him Frank:

The plot is 14′ by 8′ – Along the left side we decided to plant a few tomatoes, a few peppers, and a few beans. Then some herbs and flowers along the back, followed by a squash on the right side and a mystery plant that Phil wont tell me about. Then we have a few rows of carrots and some flowers along the front. We added a brick pathway to help teach Wil where it was okay to walk and dig.  We also have a cool laminated pamphlet that shows all the bugs he can find in the garden.

We’ve spent a few hours at the garden every weekend, usually plan around Evie’s morning nap.  She snoozes by the shed, while I weed and Phil plants.  Wil loves to find bugs and help roll the wheel barrow.  We’ve met a few people (there are 81 plots in the city garden!).  One of the families we recognized from our saturday soccer shots!

At the end of our gardening session, Wil waters all the plants and we head home.  Its SUCH a great hobby!!!!  Who knows if we’ll grow anything, but we’re really enjoying the process.

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Spring is finally here!!!  This winter was especially long, right?!  Its so nice to be out of the house and into the sun shine.  On Saturday mornings Wil and Phil go to ‘soccer shots’ – which is a coach-led, kid-friend soccer activity, which involves no actual soccer. They do kick things, occasionally, but it’s mostly chaos.  Its more like a 30 minutes of soccer-themed activities for 2-year olds and they get stickers at the end of each session.

My mom’s group has expanded into happy hours on the occasional weekend.  Its so nice to have a kid-friendly social event on the calendar.  Phil and I used to try to go out to dinner with the kids – but would be totally stressed out about Wil spilling water on the table, or Evie having a melt down. When we’re in a kid-friendly environment, the kids entertain themselves and the houses are pretty much kid-proofed, so you dont feel mortified if your kid spills something. And we can enjoy a beer and adult conversation for a few hours.

Phil and I have also tried to have a few more date nights on the calendar.  Its so awesome having a nanny who can also babysit on the weekend.  She already knows their routine.  They are comfortable with her. And Phil and I can completely enjoy our night knowing they are in good hands.  We can have a nice meal without worrying about spilling anything!  We actually have a date night tonight!  We are planning to go to the Os game as long as it doesnt rain.  This will be my first Os game without a baby on my lap!

We’ve also been enjoying going to our new garden every weekend! But that deserves its own post.  Stay tuned…

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We had a beautiful Easter in Baltimore this year.  The annual egg hunt in the park was rescheduled to much further away, so some friends and I organized our own egg hunt the Thursday before Easter.  Everyone pitched in some eggs, and we met at a local park. Afterwards we went to a friends house to do a craft and eat some candy.  Wil is catching on to holidays and totally loved shaking the plastic eggs to figure out if something was inside.

Evie enjoyed the scenery from her stroller, but I’m sure she will participate next year.  She did like to observe coloring the eggs at home though:

On Easter morning we walked up to a local church.  I wanted to walk around before Mass to show Wil some of the things in a church, but it was still locked at 9:30 before a 10am mass!  The kids were getting very restless, so we headed home to open easter baskets and put stickers on the colored eggs.

I tried to get a few pictures of the kids in their nice outfits – but they didnt quite cooperate

Afterwards, Wil helped me make egg salad, we had a nice meal,  and Evie helped me clean up the dishes:

Happy Easter Everyone!

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So they are replacing the 100 year old water pipes on our street. Which is a good thing.  But obviously creates a bit of turmoil in the process.  We were unable to park on our street from 9-5 from March 31 to May 1st.  Which is a huge pain when you are toting around 2 children (and groceries, and strollers, and diaper bags…). But Wil was  fan of the construction equipment:

We walk by it almost every day! Its still parked south of our street.

We had above ground water pipes for over a month:

Then they failed and leaked into our basement:

Which was followed by a huge rain storm, which leaked more water into our basement.  But the silver lining was that the carpet was already pulled up! (Polish that turd!)

At least with everything pulled up from the basement, Wil and Evie had plenty of pillows and blankets to play with:

As on 5/9/14 – the construction still isnt done, but our basement is put back together.  Hoping for no more disasters.

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Oh man thats just what we needed.  This winter has been long and it was so nice to step foot on the beach.  Getting down there was a bit rough –  our flight was delayed, we ran out of water on the plane, Wil leaked through his diaper, Evie screamed a good part of the way, but that just seems par for the course these days.  At least we had 80 degree weather after it was over.   Thursday morning we woke up to this:

Wil was hesitant at first, but learned to love the beach.  We had beautiful weather all 4 days and spent as much time as possible out doors. This was the first time I had been back to the condo in about 10 years – and it was the first time Phil or the kids have been there.  So it was really fun doing all the things I did as a kid with my own children.  We over lapped with Andrew and Jessie on Thursday and went on a date night Friday.  The rest of the time was spent following the basketball games and hanging out with Mimi and Pop pop!

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The kids had a blast.  Evie always had someone to hold her and Wil always had something new to explore.  The only thing I forgot were books for bedtime, but we made do with people magazine and rolling stone.  Id flip through the pages and tell him a story about justin beiber and he was happy enough.  On the plane ride home – Wil was tuckered out:

We came back to snow and ice on Monday, But its looking like spring is finally around the corner.  Thanks for having us Mom and Dad!  It was a really special trip!

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We’ve been keeping a low profile these days.  After Phil got back from Telluride, we celebrated valentines day and my birthday.  Then Annakate was in the area for an evening and got to meet Evie for the first time.  The next weekend, I was able to go to Indy for a night to help Celia pick out a wedding dress!  Phil finished-up things at his old position at Aberdeen and started his new job at Fort Meade.  We’re had crazy weather — after a snow day on March 3rd, we headed to the zoo in short sleeves on March 8th.  Today it was warm, but tomorrow we are expecting snow storms. I’m heading to a stats conference tomorrow, but then the whole family is heading down to Naples, FL for a much-needed spring vacation!!  I’m even going to leave my laptop at home!

A random funny story from today – I was addressing bridal shower invitations for Cel’s up coming shower, and got through about 25 invitations before screwing up one of them. Once that happened, though, I loudly proclaimed ‘Oh shit!’ (as I often do – but havent thought much of it, since Wil never seems to pay much attention to us…until now.).  Phil was playing video games and Evie was sleeping.  I carried on with the invitations.  Wil was talking to himself, playing with his choo-choos, but Phil and I both suddenly stopped what we were doing when we realized he just kept saying ‘oh shit, ooooh shit, oh shit’.  Phil and I nearly lost it.  People always told us he would start repeating after us – but this was the first time he has ever truly done it.  Phil and I were laughing hysterically – but muffled our laughs for Wil and Phil quickly redirected him to playing basketball.  He hasnt said it since (and neither have I!).  I guess we really do need to start watching what we say!!

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Nine months in…Nine months out!

Some people says she has dimples.  I prefer to call it ‘face-cellulite’.

Bunny pictures are hard to come by these days.  She doesnt stay still for long.   This girl barrel rolls everywhere. She can get anywhere she wants to go, fast, with a series of rolls and turns.  Just this week she is starting to get her knees under her, but I wonder if she’ll ever crawl given how efficient she is at rolling.

She looks like a freaking toddler in the picture above, compared to 5 weeks below. I guess that makes sense since she is nearly 23 pounds and 2 feet, 5 in tall.  She practically is the size of a toddler these days! She is exclusively in 18 month clothes.

5 weeks old!

She is rocking a pony tail now. We try to keep it out of her eyes during the day, but at night we let it down.  And she loves twirling the hair by her ears as we give her the night-time bottle.  Its pretty adorable.

She is eating solids twice a day and loves pretty much everything.  She has 3 bottom teeth (23, 24, and 25) and one top tooth (8) but we think the other top tooth is coming in soon. (Did I get those tooth numbers right, doctors?)

Shes starting to become very vocal and will definitely let you know when she’s unhappy about things.  She was going through a stretch where she didnt like to be put down.  At all.  And was waking up in the middle of the night again.  But we think/hope that was a teething phase.  She seems to be doing better this week.  Thank goodness – Phil and I were at wit’s end the last few weeks.

She knows how to wave and clap. She loves to watch wil throw things and tries to throw things herself.  She especially loves playing with bubbles (which is Wil’s reward when he uses the potty).  She says ‘mama’ often  – mainly when she wants something.  So I’m not quite sure if she’s actually calling me — Or it’s just her word for ‘help’.  We’ll see.

I also had my mom send a few pictures of me when I was little.  Everyone says Wil is an exact replica of Phil (even though I see Andrew/Pop-pop in him, as they were babies).  I’d like to think Evie at least has a little of me in her :

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bath time cuteness

Not so sure of all of this…

cheese!

Cheesers.

Wonderlab!

hugs

Evie gets a lot of update posts these days.  And I dont want to forget about Wil.  He’s honestly been awesome lately.  And is growing up so fast.  I need to remember to document his growth too!  His language is finally exploding.  He says so many words and can repeat after you.  Though it is sometimes hard to make-out what he is saying, unless you have the picture or object that he is referring to right in front of you.  Hes making great progress though and its easier to communicate with him.

During our christmas break, he got use to sleeping on a floor mattress.  So we thought it would be a good time to move him out of the crib at home.  His normal nighttime routine would be:  Upstairs with Daddy:

Bath time (Phil approved this photo):

Play time in the room with Mommy – then books, lullabies, and night time in the crib:

But now we have adjusted nighttime in order to move Evie into the nursery!  We FINALLY have our room back to ourselves and Evie and Wil share a room.  Now Wil sleeps on a mattress on the floor.  We are waiting until he stops rolling off of it to include the box-spring and eventual bed-frame:

Wil takes a bath first – then Phil gets him dressed and reads stories while I give Evie a bath.  Then I give Evie a bottle in the rocker and put Evie down in the crib, which we moved to the other side of the room and ‘girl-i-fied’ a bit:

Then I lay with Wil and sing songs while Evie fusses herself to sleep. Once Evie is asleep – I slip out while Wil falls asleep on his own.  Then Phil and I can watch a television show or read or talk about our day in our own room without a child within 5 feet of us for the first time in 9 months!!

Wil has done a GREAT job sharing his room.  Evie still fusses in the middle of the night and can wake up Wil.  Every once in a while we hear wil at 2am saying ‘Evie – NO! SHHH!!!!’.  She usually goes back down, but occasionally we need to go in and rescue him.  We’ll bring Evie back into our room, or one of us will lay with Wil while the other gets Evie back to sleep.  Its a process.  But we’re on the right track (I think, I hope, who knows…)

Wil has been very active in the kitchen.  He loves to help me cut up vegetables for dinner or stir things on the stove.  Lately, our favorite thing to do on Sunday morning is make pancakes together.  He loves to pour in pre-measured ingredients.  Sometimes his aim is a little off and flour goes evvvvverywhere! but thats part of the fun, right?  Then the most fun involves cutting shapes out of the pancakes with cookie cutters!  Heres and example of his and her breakfasts on a sunday morning:

Wilek – you have been such a sweet big brother and are growing up so fast.  I’m loving every minute.  Thanks for being so wonderful.

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In early February – Phil was able to get away with his brother on a ski trip out in Telluride to see Em and Sam!  Ever since their wedding back in August, Phil has been talking about going back for skiing.  I’m so glad he was able to make it.  He had a few fresh pow days and some great Q-T with his sibs.  Here are some epic pics:

While the boy was away – I flew in reinforcements.  My Mom was able to come for the entire time Phil was gone and help me with the kids – I cant even tell you how wonderful this was!  2 kids is tough — so no better person to bring in than someone who raised 4!!!!  It was a cake-walk for her.  She helped me host my neighborhood playgroup on Thursday morning and watched the kids on Friday while I went to work and Liz was off.  On Saturday we went to the Aquarium and then she helped watch Evie while I finally got Wil a hair-cut and shopped for Phil’s Valentines present.  It was a successful, fun and productive week!  The most I can ever hope for! Thanks Mom!!!

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