Boo!

In preparation for my last baby's FIRST Halloween, I spent approximately 3,472 hours looking at costumes online.  In the end, I chose the path of least resistance (or most procrastination and indecision?) which was the nearly free costume that fell into my lap at Gymboree while I was buying Christmas hats.

She was the sweetest little witch in Naperville!

Ulia and I started Halloween early with a parade at church with the moms group we've been dabbling in.  October's presentation was about photography.  They had me at hello!

After we had our session and paraded properly through the building, I decided to try and use some of the tips they taught us.  Really, it was just an excuse for some natural light pictures, because those indoor pics above were not cutting it for me!

Ahhh, much better.  Even with Maeve's "I smell something funky!" face

All Cameron needed was a smartie and he was all smiles for Auntie.  That's because he's a SMARTIE!

More sourpuss faces from Maeve and I have no idea what was going wonky with my shirt, or my lack of eyeballs (where ARE my eyes disappearing to, I'd like to know?)   

Ah, but this one below is PERFECTION!!! 

A week or two later, the real Halloween came, and Cameron came to join us there too!!  We are so stinking lucky to have a cousin practically down the street.

I give you, Cleopatra, a dapper Fox, and Herobrine

Maeve was passed out in her crib and Jack disappeared before the camera came out to go trick-or-treating with his 6th grade buddies.   He dressed as Slenderman in his black dress suit and red tie over a white morphsuit.  Don't ask.  I was just happy there was no blood or gore invovled!

We sprayed Molly's hair with black hairspray and I did a little hocus pocus with my liquid black eyeliner.

She felt like a queen, that's for sure!  But I was a little surprised at just how MATURE she looked!  I could almost see the tween in her eyes.  (Of course I scrubbed it all off as soon as the clock struck 8pm!)

Here is our hero Herobrine doing the Halloween equivalent of a forehead smack because Mom insisted on JUST. ONE. MORE. PICTURE!

But I couldn't help myself, I mean seriously, are these people cute or what? 

Finally it was time to get the show on the road!  

Did I mention it was a veritable MONSOON outside, until two minutes before these pictures were taken?

 .

Indiana and southern Illinois postponed Halloween until the next night, but not Naperville!

The show must go on!  Thankfully there was a 45 minute break in the weather.

Just long enough to get down our street and back.

I was so tickled that the kids got to trick-or-treat with Uncle Paul!

Daddy didn't get the memo, and came out 20 minutes later with a cooler filled with adult beverages.

But this wasn't that kind of year.

This was a "grab your umbrella and pray" kind of year.

At least the pumpkins looked good.

L to R are Molly's cat, Maeve's Maeve, Ben's spooky guy, and Jack's Minecraft Creeper

(clearly, this year was all about the video games...but again, at least there was no gore!)

I couldn't resist - Maeve's two bottom teeth are so cute, I needed to memorialize them.

Molly nearly had a stroke when I told her that with 48 hours before Halloween and a father who was away on business, our jack-o-lanterns needed to be SIMPLE.  This is as simple as she could get and still survive apparently.  Much better than the hand-carved BFF tribute she'd originally envisioned with multiple layers of carving.  (this is what happens when your kids know you're crafty!)

My hand was so tired by the time I got to Jack's (he couldn't go near his because he has smell and touch aversion issues to raw, juicy pumpkins) that I didn't even bother to cut the top off.  I figured the dangling stringy pumpkin bits inside would add to the creepiness of the Creeper.

I had Ben draw what he wanted me to cut right on the pumpkin.  He did, I cut, and he proclaimed it PERFECT!  Well, thank goodness someone was pleased...

Ben was not pleased with his costume though.

It took a few houses before he would finally admit that he could not see a thing!

Off came the box-head and down the street went Ben, no worse for the wear.

Maeve finally woke up!

All the kids were off trick or treating, so I parked her at the open front door with the stash of candy to hand out.  I had a feeling she'd be so enthused by all the pretty treats that I could stand on the porch and get a few shots in before the last light of the day vanished.

I was right.  She loved it!

Still has no idea there's actually something TASTY inside all those crinkly, colorful wrappers. 

She loves them just the same though!

The kids came home, the skies poured down, and I was left with half a bin of candy because it was such a dud of a night.

As I explained to a very disappointed Molly...

you can't win 'em all!

But secretly, this was my favorite Halloween since we moved here!

Totally low-key thanks to Mother Nature.

Kids had about fifteen pieces of candy each instead of 20 pounds like usual.

Everyone was in bed by 8:30.

And Marc and I sat down with those adult beverages to relax.

Aaaah!

Musings from the Trenches

I try to pick up the house every night before bed so that we will wake up to a clean slate and start our day from a place of order and serenity.  

And yet every morning between the hours of 7 and 9, the place gets wrecked like a demolition site.  It honestly looks like a tornado ripped through, and takes at least another two hours to put back together.  I'm not laying blame here, because it's a team effort, this wrecking ball of ours.  

I'm just saying that 

it's CRAZY.

But what's EVEN MORE CRAZY??

Every day, after Maeve and I put Molly and Ben on the bus and come home to start our day, *IT SURPRISES ME* as if I've never seen such a thing before in all my life!  I shake my head in disbelief, utter some startled noises and go pour myself a cup of coffee to try and figure out what the HECK happened.

Lather.  Rinse.  Repeat.

Every ding dong day.

Crazy, I tell you.

Happy Birthday To ME + Making Pumpkin Picking Stress FREE!

Yesterday was my birthday! 

Number 41.  I know, try to stifle the yawn.  41 is so...anticlimactic after the big 4-0!  

It's a celebration, don't get me wrong...it's just not a CELEBRATION!!!!

It was a great, low, key, stay in your pajamas until 4pm and clean the kitchen from top to bottom kind of day.  I got lovely cards from Marc and the kids, and the only present I asked for, which was a biggie!  A weekend with Molly and Maeve back in Massachusetts!  Our flight leaves Friday and we are pumped!  Well, except for the little problem of Maeve cutting her top two teeth...and NOT gracefully, like she did her bottoms.  It's been U-G-L-Y around here.  I got 4 hours of broken sleep last night and had to fire up the swing for the first time in two months.

These pumpkins depict how my brain feels after too many sleepless nights!

But besides that part, the day was sweet and spent with my favorite people.  Giving Maeve an extra-long bath...playing puppets with Ben (we were dinosaurs playing catch with the head of a Power Rangers Megazord - it was hilarious!)...helping Molly do math homework (elapsed time is a killer!)...discussing our house tech rules with Jack ad nauseum (a daily ritual for him).

Case in Point, somebody smuggled his iPod because he just. can't. put. it. DOWN.

The one thing I wanted to do, which I knew had to be broad and flexible lest it not happen at all, was to "get out in nature".  At first, I'd hoped we could get to the Arboretum....but that didn't happen.  Then I thought maybe we'd go to the pumpkin farm.  But we were too lazy and preoccupied.  So as a last ditch effort to make something happen, we ran up to the farmstand at the edge of our neighborhood to buy Maeve's first pumpkin - which was exactly how I spent my 30th birthday too, only it was baby Jack's first pumpkin!

Here she is making her selection.  She wanted to be one with the pumpkin, so she dressed the part!

Out here in Chicagoland, everything is done BIG.  There isn't just a pumpkin patch.  There's a pumpkin EXTRAVEGANZA everywhere you turn.  With corn mazes, and hayrides, pony rides and camel rides, puppet shows and climbing walls, petting zoos and train rides, giant slides and pumpkin trebuchets, haunted houses and fun houses, face painting and pig racing, gift shops and photo ops...

Oh, and they sell pumpkins too.

It is all TOO MUCH!  We just needed a few good pumpkins.

The key to stress-free pumpkin picking I realize now (after a few years of doing it the other way) is to keep expectations LOW and choices LIMITED. This is an automatic side benefit to showing up at a local farmstand ten minutes before the place closes, which is exactly what we did!

11 days before Halloween, there wasn't much left to choose from, so choices were made expeditiously!

one....two...three...four!

And everyone felt pretty happy with their choices, instead of running around a 200 acre mega-farm like crazy people trying not to miss anything.

Okay, maybe Ben and Jack were a little tired of taking pictures...

But Maeve and I had a lovely time, especially for two people high on endorphins from not sleeping.

A perfect birthday.  Just like the one 11 years before...

Bookends.

I love my iPhone

I love my iPhone for many reasons, but mostly for its camera.  It has made it so easy to catch those little, fleeting kairos moments that otherwise would be lost to the ether.  Without the fanfare required to drag out the big camera, which in essence requires stepping out of the moment, I can simply and quickly go from

"Oh, I wish I could just bottle this moment up its so perfect!"...

To this...

We were just nursing when someone had a smile attack!

Waving "hi" to the baby in the camera.

Someone really loves looking at that baby in the camera okay, two someones!

Smiley baby overload.

The end.

To Nap or NOT to Nap

First time mothers are always admonished to "sleep when the baby sleeps!", but fourth time mothers know...there is no rest for the weary!  Nap time is for getting things DONE.  Today, that means culling the toys in the (disorganized, disastrous, tsunami of childhood) play room for my garage sale on Friday, and lucky for me, Maeve slept terribly last night so she should have been poised for a fabulous morning nap. 

NOTSOMUCH!

This week has been a moving and grooving week for Miss M.  She has figured out how to go from laying to sitting, from sitting to pulling up and from pulling up to sitting down, and back to laying down.  She is THISCLOSE to crawling too.  I need a nap just thinking about it, so I can't imagine what is keeping her awake!

I guess just like with my other babies, once they learn a new mobility trick, they JUST. CAN'T. STOP!  I remember Jack crawling around in circles in his crib for upwards of an hour before he finally collapsed, asleep. 

Two nights ago I found her sitting up in her crib and I knew it was time to lower that mattress - it's amazing that we've made it this far really, I probably should have lowered it before now, but I'm so short that I love the top mattress position because it's the only one I can lay the baby down in.  The others require me to drop them the last inches (I suppose I could climb up on a stool...I'll have to look for a stool!)

Anwhoo, Maeve's sleeping has gone to pot because of all of her aerobics.  Not that it was good to begin with.  Since the great swing-wean of August, there hasn't been too much sleep 'round these parts.  

Not sure what my point was as I sat down to write this post....I think I was killing time listening to Maeve fuss in her bed, hoping that she would go back to sleep...but she didn't.  Too busy sitting up and not realizing that she can lie back down to sleep some more.  So now it's four hours later and she's been nursed, changed, played with, fed lunch, played with some more, nursed some more and laid back down for nap number two.  I just sang her the tune of Gilligan's Island...but I changed the refrain to

A TWO HOUR NAP....A TWO HOUR NAP.

Let's hope it worked subliminally!  I've made it through the boys' toys, and am on to Molly's.  If I never sort another Lego again, I'll be a happy woman (but I know that will never happen, not in this house!)

The Crafty Brain

I've heard that musicians "see" their life experiences and the world around them in musical notes.  Their brains are just hardwired for it and the music just comes to them, or maybe through them.   It's almost as if they are led to create and share it.  

Its the same with writers who feel it's imperative to capture their observations with pen and paper, or poets who have verse and meter tapping away in their brains even as they do something as mundane as walking down the street, or artists with their brushes, paints and canvases.

And for those of us with a crafty affliction, sometimes a vision just appears in our heads and we know...without a doubt...that we. must. create.  it.

That is how Carl came to be.

Carl started out as a birthday gift for Ben's friend Colin.  Colin LOVES minions, and his dad is a doctor.  What could be a more perfect gift than a game of Minion Operation!!

Today was Colin's party and it dawned on me that I didn't have any 'kid-friendly' gift wrap, so Maeve and I stopped at Target to pick some up. 

"I wonder if they make Despicable  Me gift wrap?" I thought.  

Nope nothing. 

"We'll, maybe I could buy some yellow wrapping paper and stick printed out minions on it"  

was my next thought. Notachance.  No yellow wrapping paper to be found.

It was then that the crafty lightbulb went off in my head.

"Maaayyybeeeeee....maybe I could wrap the gift to BE a minion!!"

Two sheets of colored poster board, one minion eye printable, some glue and a black sharpie later....

Carl was born!

The sheets of poster board were less than a buck apiece - cheaper than real giftwrap!

The goggle printable didn't go all the way across the gift, so I improvised with a sharpie to fill in the rest.

Luckily, Carl doesn't have much hair.

I freehanded the overalls and cut them out.

Originally I just drew on a pocket, but then I worried that sticking a card to the gift would ruin Carl, so I made a card-pocket instead.

I love the way it turned out!

Maeve's a fan too...though I think she may jut want to eat Carl.
Look out Carl!  Teething baby at 3:00!

I know, I know.

It's not the Mona Lisa, or Leaves of Grass, or Beethoven's 9th...It was just 20 minutes of crafty bliss during naptime and it made me happy for days every time I thought about it. 

Crafty fun is my antidepressant.  I don't know why it works, I'm glad it does!

Colin liked Carl too.  I hope we get invited over for a round or two of Minion Operation - it looks like a riot!

She Speaks!!!

Short post today.  We've got budding skillz in talking,

but notsomuch in the sleep training department.

 

Must go save the blubbering mess from herself after a whopping 20 minute nap and a whopping 20 minute cry while Mommy prayed she would figure out how to get herself back to sleep.

 

She didn't.

 

Sleep traing BITES.

 

Big Time.

 

But talking babies are cute, right?