my house smells like tocino

cooked brinner tonight (a/k/a breakfast for dinner). tocino, eggs and rice. tocilog, without the sinaangag. (sp?) and smelling the house makes me nostalgic and reminds me of growing up. it's funny how certain smells remind you of different times of your life (like how cool water and hugo boss will forever remind me of senior year high school and fresh cut grass reminds me of grade school, in the spring, when we'd have to shut the windows at the first sniff of cut grass due to one classmate's debilitating allergies. random, huh?).

didn't get to post last night because i was smack in the middle of two kids, passed out on our bed. e went to a hockey game with coworkers so i had to attempt to put both girls down for bed. luckily, it went easier than i expected (e feared he'd come home at 11 to all 3 of us, still awake). thank goodness for fios on demand and for 'hush little baby' for helping get the girls to sleep.

between when they fell asleep and when e got home, i caught up on some tv, including dancing with the stars, general hospital and last week's vampire diaries. oh. em. gee. for reals. so many bombs dropped and tiny secrets revealed here and there... seriously, my guilty pleasure that is SO GOOD.

anyways, we didn't have the heart to move them once they were passed out, so all 4 of us slept in the bed and, after bulilit's usual midnight waking, all of us slept through the night! girls didn't wake each other or us up until 7:30.

today, i'm thankful for the 30 minutes of peace and quiet i had (plus 15 min driving each way). happy almost easter!

took the weekend off, now i'm back!

monday, again. while the lack of a post over the weekend may suggest that i was super busy, don't be fooled. saturday was spent running errands (alone! thanks e!) and i was the crazy one running around in flip flops when it was near 30 degrees, all for the sake of getting a pedicure. (but totally worth it. i heart pedicures and don't get them nearly often enough.) that afternoon, belly, bulilit and i joined their grandma for a baby shower of a high school friend, who coincidentally lives down the street from my mom. at said baby shower, belly and bulilit were eating non. stop. and bulilit made a little friend who she liked to poke and touch and hug, despite the poor little girl's complaints.

my parents graciously offered to watch the kids on sunday so e and i could have some real child-free time off. nothing beats a movie on the lovesac and delicious fried goodness from arby's.


other random things i'm thankful for, in general...

-belly is off the pacifier!! and thankfully, the process was a lot less painful than i was anticipating. after the first couple nights, she stopped even asking for it. now on to weaning from the bottle...

-bulilit is potty training! (yes, bulilit, the little one, and not my almost 3 year old.)

-belly is pretty much sleeping in her own room. i've told her that if she wakes up, she can come into our room, but to try and stay in her room and fall asleep first. so one night last week, i had been asleep for maybe an hour when i open my eyes and see belly, standing on the stool next to the bed staring at me. would've been totally creepy if it wasn't my daughter!

-bulilit letting me cuddle with her over the weekend. she's not normally a cuddly child, much less malambing than belly, so whenever she lets me, i take advantage of hugging her and squeezing her and loving her forever! (ten points if you know where that's from. or you can just follow the link and find out)

-movies with ryan reynolds. haha.

-starbucks grande skim latte. yum.

friday, where have you been?

ahhh, fridays. i remember when fridays at 9:45 pm meant i was getting all dolled up to go out with my friends and hit up some club in dc where we knew who was promoting so we didn't have to wait in line. haaa ...that was back in the days when i put on make-up, wore pretty clothes and actually donned heels. now, my life consists of clipping back my "stylish" side swept-bangs, throwing on the most comfortable clothing i can find and throwing on uggs or flip flops (depending on the weather) if i need to run to the store. yeah, i'm so not glamorous anymore.

and sometimes i do wish i could trade my life for that time, at least for a little bit. especially when belly is being super clingy (which is, hmm, every. day.) and when bulilit throws tantrums when she doesn't get her way. but since time machines haven't been invented yet and since i do have this responsibility called parenting that i can't really figure out a way around... then i guess i'll just have to make do with re-reading old journals and living vicariously both through me, circa 1999-2002, and through my friends/family who are still single and living it up.

not that i don't enjoy my life as it is right now... yes, i'm looking for the occasional escape, but little things like taking belly to ballet this morning -- where they put on a little dance recital, and my daughter decided she wanted to be the red fairy from sleeping beauty, completely shunning the other, pastel-colored costumes of other princesses -- or watching bulilit eagerly feed herself noodles with a spoon, or giving the girls a bath and watching them splashing around and having fun with daddy while i get them clean .... these little things seriously make it worth it.

wow, didn't think i'd get all contemplative here. i'm just happy it's friday, the kids are sleeping and we have a pretty relaxing weekend in front of us.

p.s., if you couldn't tell, today i'm thankful for old journals which never fail to bring a smile to my face.

sitting in the sunshine, feeling the breeze

i love spring (well, except for the allergies!). i'm sitting in my backyard, computer on my lap, working away. while last week was sunny and warm, it was cold and rainy the past couple days. so now that the sun is back out i am basking in it.

i am thankful for bulilit's wide-eyed innocence and wonder at the littlest things. while we were sitting on the playground, she was sitting on the edge, completely entranced by the wood chips, picking them up and running them through her fingers. makes me wistful, as i sit here with what feels like the weight of the world on my shoulders.

yesterday, i was thankful for where we live, because the community playground is literally in our backyard. so we were out there for awhile, and didn't have to come in until almost 7pm because it didn't require a long trek back the house. (and yay for belly and bulilit's playground friends!!)

eta, also thankful for e. pretty much every day but especially on 3/24. he knows why.

bellyisms

we've completed a week of belly sleeping in her own room!! slept in there again with her last night, because i haven't put up the baby gate on the stairs yet and i don't want her toddling half-asleep in the middle of the night without it. she's currently sleeping in her bed right now - in between her toodee and muno cuddle pillows.

i'm pretty much thankful everyday for the blessings who are my children. but belly's been so darn cute that i'm extra thankful for her today.

sometime in the middle of the night last night, i somehow wake from a deep sleep to hear a quiet, persistent whisper of "mommy. mommy. mommy." i open my eyes and am met with two brown eyes staring at me from in between the wooden rails on her toddler bed. it would've been scary if it wasn't so comical.

then this morning, she woke me up by practically screaming, "i'm a sheep, baaaaaaa!" i open my eyes (again) and i see her wearing her lamb hat given to her by her lovely cousin. i burst out laughing.

later on, we're in the car and she pulls out her dazy cow pillow pet. and proceeds to yell in a very loud voice, "MooooooO!!! mooooo!!!" (have you heard about these pillow pet things? e's parents gave one to belly forever ago and apparently they are the hottest thing now! i saw a kiosk at the mall selling them a couple weeks ago...)

belly has also decided that she'd like to skip right ahead to the "why?" phase. after almost everything i say, she turns to me and says, "why?" so i give her the most basic answer i can come up with at the moment, but the whys continue. so i pretend to ignore her, she gets frustrated and the whys become, "why? TELL ME!" it would be obnoxious if i didn't dissolve into laughter every. single. time.

p.s. nanny found another wasp in the basement, crawling along the carpet. so much for peace of mind. the pest company will be hearing from me tomorrow!

peace of mind

ahh peace and quiet. belly and bulilit both asleep, and e is playing ps3 in the basement. i feel like i can finally relax... last week we had 7 wasp sightings inside our house, one in every room then some extra visitors in my bedroom and in our living room. so the exterminators came out here today and removed two nests (one which apparently was on my bedroom window!!), plus sprayed each of the windows in the house. which meant we had to take the kids out for 3 hours while the house aired out. (hmm, perhaps i should've left some windows open...)

we, of course, ended up at the mall since it was super rainy today and the kids played in the play area for a couple hours. so, thank you fair oaks mall play area for providing a great place for kids to play!

thankful for eggs, sun and cupcakes

i am such a twi-mom. ugh, i hate that term and i'll deny it to the high heavens but it's true. the new moon dvd came out today and while i wasn't at a midnight party to purchase it, i did come across this clip from eclipse that was included on the dvd:


though new moon apparently doesn't have the audio commentary that made the twilight dvd so enjoyable, i think i need to pay target a visit and make a purchase tomorrow. :)

anyways, got sidetracked there. this morning, we took belly and bulilit to my grad school alma mater (go hoyas! though you did NOT show up on thursday and proceeded to ruin my bracket) for an easter egg hunt (yes, i realize we are still in the lenten season and easter is not for another two weeks. tell that to the alumni organizing committee). the hunt couldn't have come on a better day -- sunny, warm and gorgeous! of course, belly was terrified of the easter bunny while bulilit looked curious (but honestly, who isn't scared of something that looks like this: http://collegecandy.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/easter-bunny-picture.jpg?????)

during the actual hunt, bulilit was fascinated by the one egg she picked up while daddy had to encourage belly to actually walk around and pick up eggs. all in all, fun was had by all and i thought the gtown alumni assoc did a good job.

after the hunt, we ventured down prospect street to finally try georgetown cupcake. honestly, i didn't have high hopes because cakelove disappointed me so much, but oh-emm-gee. seriously, so good. the frosting on the vanilla squared that i had was a tad on the sweet side but the cake was absolute perfection. we brought home half a dozen; my dad had a coconut cupcake while e had chocolate ganache and both said they were really good. i think georgetown cupcake will need to be a mandatory stop anytime we find ourselves in georgetown. (pictures coming soon!)

proud mommy

i am so proud of my babies! i've refrained from talking about it the past few days, and i know i'm jinxing myself by talking about it now, but both girls are working on new milestones this week! now that bulilit is over a year, e and i have decided that we need to wean from the night nursing. so to avoid belly waking up whenever bulilit does, we started belly in her own bed in her room. six nights in a row and she's stayed in her own room!! and bulilit is doing better with the no-sleeping-next-to-mommy-and-using-her-as-a-human-pacifier. though daddy isn't getting much sleep. hoping that by next week, everyone will be settled into the new routine and mommy can go back to her own bed versus the very hard floor of belly & bulilit's room.

not too bad...

about 13 hours too late, but look, another post!

yesterday, former nanny had her baby boy!! she actually left from our house tuesday night, went straight to the hospital because of some tightening in her belly and then never went home. baby REG was born at 7:10 am on wednesday, march 17. congrats to the new parents!!

i got to visit mommy and baby, who were both passed out for most of my visit. here's hoping for a baby who sleeps and has an easy temperament (which is most definitely the opposite of my belly and bulilit, but i love my strong-willed, vocal and demanding girls anyway!)

so yesterday i was thankful for a new baby being brought into this world, healthy and happy... and also for the chick-fil-a meal - complete with strawberry milkshake - that i consumed in the car on the way home from the hospital!

whoa! a post??

well look at that, i managed no lag time between posts! woo hoo!!

it's been a long day... and feeling like it may be a long night (no real reason it will be, but i just have a *feeling*) but i am so thankful the rain finally stopped and we had SUN today! it felt so good to sit in the warm sunlight bathing my dining room, with my bare feet being warmed by the floor which had been sitting in sunlight for the better part of 3 hours.

what's even better? it's supposed to be warm and sunny the rest of the week!!

hmmmm

so i guess i'm not as good as i hoped to be in keeping this up on a daily basis. huh. i'm up to what, 10 things i need to be thankful for. damn, that's a LOT.

i don't even really have a good excuse this time. there's the usual 'kid was sick then i was sick so updating a blog was last on my priority list' ... or the work event that we have been spending all of this time planning actually happened ... or the shower for our former nanny finally happened ... yeah. i'm good at coming up with excuses.

so let's try to recreate my calendar and figure out things to be thankful for this past week and a half.

saturday, march 6: nephew's birthday party! thankful that others really were the ones to do the work for the party, as we were only hosting at our house. all i had to really do was clean up the house. also thankful that parents made it back from the west coast safely.

sunday, march 7: thankful for H&M! man, it's been a long time since i shopped at that store (now that i've been working from home for the better part of a YEAR, e always asks me why i need to buy new clothes. well excuse me, dear husband, but just because i work from home doesn't mean i need to be in pajamas 24/7! though, to be fair, i used to rock the PJs all day. til we got a new, non-family member nanny). ANYWAYS, walked into H&M on a whim while Ami watched the girls at Barnes & Noble, and found cute shirts and dresses, all made of organic cotton, for a FRACTION of the cost at hanna andersson. (and let's get serious, the cutesy stuff at HA is nice for awhile, but some of their prints are really out there. e calls some of them circus outfits.) then, i walked into esprit and found a very cute dress for me!

monday, march 8: thankful for my mommy, who came and watched the girls, because i REALLY had to go to work. and belly is still experiencing severe separation anxiety, so leaving her with her sister and new nanny was just not an option.

tuesday, march 9: sounds silly, but thankful that i still know how to small talk. i hate it with a passion and still don't think i'm very good at it, but i had to attend another work event -- this time, a dinner -- and i chit chatted with a random person at the cocktail hour, then my table neighbor for a good 45 minutes combined. honestly? i don't even remember what we talked about.

wednesday, march 10: thankful for gatorade and town house wheat crackers. because that's the only thing that calmed my stomach somewhat after upchucking a meal i had eaten 12 hours prior. nothing like getting a stomach bug from your kid!! (p.s. shout out thank you to e, who got me gatorade at 10 pm. now that doesn't sound super late but since we've had kids, 10 pm is the new 2 am.)


thursday, march 11: mentioned it before but i don't think i've limited myself to something NEW to be thankful for each day. so on this day i was again thankful that i have a flexible schedule. belly and i ventured out on this beautiful spring day to pick up some needed items for the baby shower i was throwing. dropped off my dry cleaning at this new place, which had -- i kid you not -- a giant, costumed cow right in the doorway. (the place is called 'spots' so haha, cow, get it? :p) belly would not even walk in the door. i had to block the 6' cow as best i could and she ran inside. ooh, also am thankful for cool, fun carts at the new harris teeter and the free balloons and cookies for kids.

friday, march 12: i ended up taking a day off, both to recover from the illness from earlier in the week and to get a few things done that needed to get done. also, because i felt guilty for missing 2 hours of work in the morning taking belly to ballet, and knowing i'd miss another 2 in the afternoon because we had to head downtown for dinner for my sister-in-law slash best friend. (ever try getting downtown at rush hour, in the rain, along 66, when there's a game at the verizon center??) no way we'd miss it though, b/c SIL slash BFF is turning thirty. and i love her to death.

oh, and totally thankful for maggie moo's ice cream cake.

(author's note: am i done yet? this will teach me to go too long between updates!!!!)

saturday, march 13: don't gag with the sweetness, but thankful for my husband. he took the girls and kept them occupied for a good 2.5 hours while i prepped for the baby shower for former nanny. then, while i was hosting the shower, he kept all the kids occupied in the basement. i'm surprised he didn't pass out from all the estrogen in the house. love you!

sunday, march 14: hmmm. not much to be thankful for on this day. between emotional outbursts, daylight savings time and cars that decide not to start so e has to wait in the parking lot while it's raining until AAA can get to him... well, i guess technically pacquiao beat clottey after midnight so that would count right??

monday, march 15: wow, lots of double thanks in this post... thankful for my mommy, who rolled up in a loaner BMW X5 (she definitely thought she was stylin, ha, love you!) to take belly out for a bit. belly went with just a little whining... maybe this will bode well for easing her separation anxiety??

hilarious

after a very rough week, both personally and professionally, I really needed a good laugh.

As usual, I turned to YouTube. Currently laughing while i watch manny pacquiao singing on jimmy kimmel. And this video never fails to make me laugh. out. loud. belly watched it yesterday without me knowing--i could hear her giggling and looked over at my ipod to see what was making her laugh.



this morning i laughed while watching belly at her ballet class. the other kids were running around, not paying attention, and there she is, on the floor, following her teacher's direction, laying on her tummy with legs up and crossed, hands on her cheeks and moving her head from side to side. and right before that, on the ballet barre, doing her kicks with hands on her hips, just like her teacher. too. cute.

so i'm thankful for laughter today. because, honestly, how would we survive??

random: I've already outed myself with the Vampire Diaries love. So thanks boo for sharing this link with me.

this crazy life

work is crazy right now. like unbelievably crazy. to the point that my manager was asking me to do one more thing and then says, "since i know you have nothing else to do - ha ;-) "



anyways, work is good because the day goes by so much faster and before i know it, i get to my absolute favorite part of the day: the time between when the nanny goes home and when we need to start getting the kids ready for bed because it's pure fun time with belly, bulilit, e and me. (at twilight, haha)



yesterday's thing to be thankful for: my nephew's 3rd birthday! bear turned 3 yesterday and it always reminds me of 2007 when my 2 cousins and i were pregnant together and bear's mom went first. (8 days after belly, ballerina was born... kinda funny how my nicknames for each of the '07 kids starts with a b.) we did dinner then had a cake for him, and it made me laugh how belly was asking to blow out the candles and asked where her presents were. ahh, kids.

today's thing to be thankful for: very few conference calls!

it's been awhile

oops. guess i haven't updated in more than a few days. i have an excuse though, and this one is legitimate, and not just some rationalization. bulilit has been sick. and i mean, really sick. poor baby spiked a fever of 104.3 last sunday night, seemingly out of nowhere.

we had a rough week, starting with a doctors appointment (note to readers: if you have to get a urine sample from an infant/toddler, be prepared to wait a few hours. infants do not like to pee on demand) that netted nothing since the tests all came back negative; vomiting monday night; fever breaking for about 12 hours on tuesday and then suddenly reappearing at 3 in the morning... cue sleep-deprived haze here.

so i guess i need to list out, hmm, 10 things? that i am thankful for... wow that's a lot, haha. And since I'm operating in that not-quite-totally-here daze from the craziness that was last week I don't think I can list one thing from each day that I'm thankful for. So here's a random assortment which I'm sure maps back to those days, but I'm not sure how.

1. toddler speak/toddlerisms. Belly's saying of the week, "Mommy, don't see me. I'm going to do something bad." Also, whenever we read her Yo Gabba Gabba book, she looks at the title page and says, "That's a big Muno. That's kinda scary."


2. Other blogs, like Rants from Mommyland , the Meanest Mom, Beltway Babywearers and The Plan. The Plan linked to this article from Cooking Light about common kitchen mistakes. Bookmarking for future reference! (Full disclosure, one of my good friends from work co-authors The Plan.)

3. Super thankful for Bulilit finally feeling better with no more fever and no more vomiting. But we still don't know what caused the fever.

4. Skype and Tokbox. Belly and bulilit got to talk to the grandparents and their godfather-slash-uncle who are all on the left coast.

5. Sounds like my previous entry, but thankful for having lunch with a former boss. i don't think i ever really appreciated how important it is to maintain relationships even after you're no longer working together.

6. A throwback to my high school days... General Hospital. Don't get to watch as much as I used to (which was RELIGIOUSLY in high school, for the Robin/Stone storyline) but I'll catch them every once in while on YouTube. And omg, Friday's episode had Robin talking about Stone again. *heart flutters* Seriously, it's the silliest thing, but that ep hasn't been deleted from the DVR. Totally plan on watching it again.

7. Speaking of things still on my DVR, i heart vampire diaries. totally my guilty pleasure. fun storylines (after a verrry slow start) and eye candy, what more could you ask for?

8. Girl scout cookies. 'Nuff said.


9. This one is actually tied to a specific day, Saturday the 27th. I'm thankful for friendly people. While at the mall, we were booking it from Children's Place to Auntie Anne's to get a drink before heading to church. Once we got to Auntie Anne's, realized that bulilit was no longer wearing a sock or shoe on her left foot. So I retrace our footsteps and there's a pink sock not 500 feet from us. I keep walking, thinking, man, the grandparents are going to be upset, we lost an expensive Janie & Jack shoe!, when a nice man taps me on the arm and says, it's right outside Aldo. i must've had the harried, worried expression on my face that only another a parent would recognize. As I get closer to Aldo, a mom says to me, we just passed it, it's right there by the shoe store. How ironic, I think to myself. And there it is, a fuzzy pink boot just waiting for me to find it. And I laugh to myself thinking, well bulilit has just put a new spin on an old story my parents liked to tell about me when I was little. Apparently, with the windows down, riding in the car, I decided to throw my shoe out the window of a moving car. Which made me really earn the nickname I'd had from near birth -- cinderella. So now the tradition lives on with bulilit!

10. Another one tied to the actual day.. Sunday, 2/28, another day, another mall. Thankful that E took both kids to the play area so I could have 30 minutes of kid-free shopping and personal grooming. :) I'd kind of forgotten how nice quiet shopping could be!