Easter 2011

my three boys, Easter 2011

i cannot believe another Easter has come and gone.

in a lot of ways, Easter was more bittersweet this year.

luckily, the sweet parts were very sweet.

i decided to make a bow tie for each of the boys since isaac had been so disappointed

that only lucas got to wear one last year.

isaac specifically wanted his bow tie to be purple and yellow, as an homage to his 

alter-ego super-villain, the shockaroo.

finding a purple/yellow fabric that wasn't terrible, was a little tricky, but i think i like what

we came up with.  

jacob wanted his bow tie to be red because that's his favorite color.  

admittedly, the control freak within me wanted to veto that because it didn't seem Easter-y enough.  

i got over it, though, and he kept his bow tie on until bed-time 

and was disappointed when i had him take it off.  

lucas didn't care that i made him a bow tie, or what color it was.

he did wear it, though, and that won him enough points that 

he was able to get away with jumping on the trampoline for several minutes without

pants on.

we had to draw the line, however, when he removed his underwear and peed 

(on the trampoline).

that kid is shameless.

(shhhhhh...i kind of love that about him.)

after our annual egg hunt at grandma and poppa's house, 

we headed home to watch "tron" and make

Easter dinner.

i'm pretty sure that i won't remember much about the food.  

but, i hope that when i think back, 

and remember this Easter,

that i will remember feeling...

hopeful,

happy, 

and, maybe, a little triumphant.

spring break 2011: the beginning

it is spring break.  and...

we.  are.  thrilled.

the first thing i heard when i opened isaac and jacob's door yesterday morning was,

"spring break cancun, yeah!!!!"

and, though we have no actual plans involving cancun, we do have quite an agenda:

sky zone -  isaac
fiji -  isaac
make bow ties -  me
make shocka-suit for the shockaroo -  isaac
miniature golf -  jacob
park -  jacob

some of these will be easier to accomplish than others.  and one of them, we just completed yesterday.

(ragain and lucas have yet to submit their wishes.)

i feel relieved to have all 3 boys at home.  even though, we had a rough 45 minutes or so, last night.  

it's 9:30 AM, and we're still in our pajamas.  we have an egg hunt this afternoon.  and we have blueberry coconut cheesecake bars in the fridge.  

practically paradise.   

last weekend, and last-last weekend

in a cage fight, between last weekend and last-last weekend, i think i know who would emerge victorious... but, you tell me.

last-last weekend:

we took the boys to the san francisco zoo.  they had fun.  we had fun.  we took family photos and looked toward the camera.  we saw a hippo, both in and out of the water.  we got souvenir pennies.  and rode a speedy little train.  we stared (sort of endlessly) at a colony of peacocks and admired their confidence.  we were not stalked by the snow leopard.  (that part was important.  the sacramento zoo snow leopard has us on its "if-i-ever-get-out-of-this-enclosure-i'm-gonna-eat-you" list.)  

good times.  see below.

 

last weekend:  

we took the boys miniature golfing.  for the first time.  ever.  

i blame saturday's good weather.  and the 7+ days of amoxicillin.  combined, they created a sense of invincibility.

as the photos may indicate, we had no interest in observing the rules of miniature golf.  

we did not keep score.  we did not line up the ball.  we sometimes swung the club like a baseball bat.  we sometimes clocked our little brother in the head.  we yelled into the lights that looked like megaphones.  

on the bright side, we made it through all 18 holes.  we did not cut into anyone else's game.  we didn't throw any of the balls.  we didn't recall any of the many episodes of america's funniest home videos where someone gets hit in the groin with a golf club, and try to re-enact it.  

i think we get bonus credit for that last one.  

and super-bonus credit because we learned something new.  we forgot (temporarily) that this type of activity might be really hard for us, and we did it anyway...

so, maybe, we have a tie.

crazy hair day

a flame-haired isaac & purple-maned jacob

crazy hair day is officially awesome. sure, it was raining. and really cold. and during a random week in february. but, still, awesome.

isaac told us that he wanted his hair to look "like fire". i don't think we achieved that...but we had fun trying. and his hair was actually astonishing to look at.

jacob did not want his hair to be touched. at least, initially. he started to warm up after seeing isaac's technicolor hair. ragain sealed the deal by showing him how easy it was to wash the colored hairspray off. that's when he said, "purple". we tried to persuade him to add another color, but jacob tends to be a fan of the less-is-more ideology.

with the big boys off to school, those colored hairsprays just begged to tint our little blondie-locks. and, in spite of hating all hair-related activities, like washing, cutting, brushing and gelling, lucas was instantly on board. he picked purple, too...

would it be wrong to make this permanent? because, i might love it. LOVE.

i mean, look at it in the sun!!!!

LOVE.

anyway, after picking up the twins from school with lucas and my mom, we headed out to t.j. maxx.

side note: until very recently, i hated t.j. maxx because i do not enjoy digging through piles of remnants. however, it seems that lowering my expectations (to zero) is really what makes this particular shopping experience enjoyable.

anyway, i was looking (vaguely---and with zero expectations) for a kitchen rug and i was running out of places to look. so, i thought maybe a far-flung t.j. maxx might be just the place.

it wasn't.

however, while looking (digging) through the kitchen utensils, and holding onto jacob and lucas, a woman with a cart comes behind us. i was mostly unaware of her until she said, "great hair!"

should i remind you? this was my merry little band at that point:

i laughed as i turned to look over my shoulder at her, and said, "yeah, crazy hair day at school."

she laughed, too. but then looked sort of confused. she started to walk away, and then said, "uh, you have great hair, too."

then, i looked confused. but she was already gone. and i couldn't clarify whether or not she meant to compliment my disheveled ponytail and baby-bang-feathers. i think i might have been better described as sloppy, or war-torn.

i might have talked myself into accepting that maybe she thought i DID have great hair. but i didn't have time to get too high on her kindness, because as i dumped my finds onto the counter, tried to help isaac to pay for his souvenir and still keep my smile from slipping straight off my face, the cashier gave me a look of concern and said,

"looks like you have your hands full."

and for a second, i felt the weight of it. my messy hair. my slippery smile. my sometimes-short-temper. a stranger's guess that i don't have it all together. the mile-long to-do list that is waiting for me at the start of every day, and how i won't get it done. my failures and weaknesses and frailties. a reality that is hard, and different.

and as quickly as it settled on my shoulders, i took a breath and smiled. i nodded at her and said, "indeed", before bobbing out the door with my rainbow-colored lovelies and our collective great hair.

miscellaneous

2008 valentine's day picture that i found on mom's laptop.

it is a rainy sunday morning and i'm sneaking in a few hours on a borrowed laptop...

this past week has been long. long, as in, it required two boxes of le petit ecolier cookies to get through it.

the long bits are boring. and, well, long. the interesting bits are as follows:

one night, while straightening up the boys' room, isaac asked me if he could smell my hair.

"it smells like hair," he pronounced.

ok. so far so good.

"it looks like sprouts," he continued.

"what?"

"it LOOKS like sprouts," he said matter-of-factly and staring straight into my eyes as though forcing me to face a very unpleasant truth. i submit. my hair does look like sprouts.

jacob asked to call ragain during a break of his tutoring session. he almost never asks to use the phone, but i dialed it for him, not really sure what he was going to say. it turned out that he was going to make a very tearful plea for ragain to come home. it was a toss-up between whether it was more sweet or more heartbreaking. the jury is still out.

lucas was running around like a maniac the other night after the twins were in bed. he was shrieking and shouting and going in circles. i felt in desperate need of semi-silence so i said, "lucas, shhhhhhhhhh!"

he whirled around, extended one arm toward me and said, "mama, be quiet!"

it was so imperious. i laughed for a minute. then, i kind of just sat there and wondered if i should have done something differently...

my brother-in-laws, ryan and robert, came to town on wednesday night. ryan lives in texas and does not pretend to have a texan accent. at least, not in front of us. he makes me laugh and is in the market for a little girl's name that has three syllables and ends with an "a". his third daughter is due next month. don't worry, we made him a pretty good list.

robert, also makes me laugh, and is fun to shop with. i know we get each other because we can have a very impassioned conversation on how important it is to like the feel and weight of your everyday silverware. i can even forgive him the time he forced me to try a (truly) atrocious vegan cookie. love you, robert.

ragain and i went to our niece, alyssa's wedding last night. i realized i was wearing a bib of graham cracker crumbs on the way there (luckily) after isaac had stroked the embellished neckline of my shirt. wardrobe mishaps aside, we had fun, danced on the sloped dancefloor and ate all of the strawberry caramel favors too quickly. oh, and they played the REO speedwagon song that i wrote about last time. how meant-to-be is that?!?!?!

*notes for the future: steph + too much hairspray = super big hair. like mandrell-sisters-big.

summer delight

the end of summer makes me feel sad. and kind of forlorn.

(when i write the word "forlorn", i think of an incredibly regrettable poem that attempts to make it rhyme with the word "unicorn". write me such a poem, and i will frame it. and love it. every single day. do it.)

a quick review of this summer's bounty:

i came back into the world of shorts. good for me. lame for onlookers.

i found and made (3 times!) the best cake for strawberry shortcake.

the boys all gained some freckles, and i wanted to name each of them. frederick, pip, vince, zeus, etc.

we tried out the drive-in movies and LOVED it. nobody even noticed that i held the bag of kettle corn the entire time...

we gained a big-boy bed and lost a couch.

the boys swam like fish. ate like horses. grew like weeds. and swore like sailors. (one of those was false)

i stayed up late, chatting with friends and doing my nails.

i didn't blow dry my hair unless i had to.

lucas and i were best friends.

isaac kissed me every day and made me laugh even when i shouldn't.

jacob built some amazing lego stuff, and made me tear up when he sang along to the radio in the car. (come on, usher really tugs on the heartstrings.)

we watched enough old reruns of SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE to convince us to watch the summer 2010 season.

we've had joint family outings with friends which multiplied the fun by the hundreds.

i've considered revisiting my childhood friendship bracelet making frenzy. what do you think? would it be rad?

under the boardwalk... down by the seeeeeaaaaa

there are probably all kinds of guilt. religious guilt. done-someone-wrong guilt. ate-all-your-child's-halloween-candy guilt. and those are all pretty rocky, and maybe even, vomit-inducing... but one form of guilt that i cannot seem to fall asleep through is the your-kid-missed-out guilt.

isaac told his teachers before school let out that we were going to legoland this summer. despite isaac's power of positive thinking strategy, we had no such plans. i laughed it off, but inside i worried. is a summer break really a summer break without a momentous excursion? probably. but just in case, i wasn't going to let guilt get the last laugh.

i was beginning to weigh various day trips when i was talking to k one afternoon. she suggested santa cruz beach boardwalk. her kids love it. top three selling points: beach, crazy rides, and garlic fries.

** i hadn't been to the boardwalk since i was about 15. and my family went one summer during a weeklong camping trip. yep. i said weeklong camping. on that trip i ended up with 19 mosquito bites ON MY FACE. 19. it was like vacation leprosy. it cannot be overstated that i do not like camping.**

k was planning to take her boys this past friday, and we decided to make it a two-car caravan.

the ride down, including 3 pit stops, went very smoothly. the boys like car travel. ragain likes listening to the radio. and i like eating chips and buttery pretzels. (crunch, crunch, crunch)

when we finally arrived at the boardwalk parking lot, jacob didn't want to get out. he said he wanted to stay in the car and take a nap. the trip took an abrupt nosedive. we convinced him to get out after a few minutes, but i was a little concerned. i hoped he would get into it once we started riding the rides...

first, family photo to prove we made it to our destination and were all still claiming to be related. in reviewing the photos, i realized i looked like a man. image omitted.

ride #1: ghost blasters. lucas and i ride together. he screams for the entire ride. i tell myself that the 19 mosquito bites were still infinitely worse.

next, the twins ride their first roller coaster. isaac buries his head in one of k's son's shoulders during the scary bits. but still, when he and jacob get off the ride, they look completely exhilarated. lucas looks jealous.

rides, rides, rides.

lucas and i foray into the world of dippin' dots. we're converted and have blue-stained mouths.

rides, rides, rides.

i almost have heart-failure as isaac and jacob soar over my head in the "superman" ride.

log ride. we get SOAKED!!! lucas looks like he wants his money back.

i scream like a maniac during the tilt-a-whirl ride. worse, i try to regain my composure over and over again by pointing out the ocean to the kids. then, the screams bubble out of my mouth again and the kids spend the rest of the ride imitating me saying, "look, the ocean. mmmmmm- aaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh!!!!!"

while putting lucas on a helicopter ride, the band, flock of seagulls, begins a beachside performance. no, seriously.

we dash out to the beach for a quick slosh in the waves, but by this time it's after 8 and freezing out in the sand. we run back to the boardwalk for several helpings of fries, and ok, maybe one corndog.

mmm fries...don't mind if i do...

lava-hot fries!

yikes!

we trudge reluctantly back to the parking lot with a warm bag of cinnamon glazed almonds jacob wants to be carried. he cries as he looks back at all the winking lights. then, kisses ragain's face, strokes his arm, and says, "thanks for bringing me."

isn't summer so good?

thursday's stats

after downing an entire icee, anything seems like a good idea...even black nails.

1 viewing of goonies - providing 1 quote i hope to erase from isaac's memory

2 aching shoulders and bandaged fingers - thank you to the makers of the slip n' slide and my lack of spacial awareness

3 sleeping kids and loads of laundry - 3 scrubbed faces, a day's worth of angst, 1 dollar, 1 dime, and a 30+ year old teddy bear are all tucked in for what one hopes will be at least 8 hours... and the washer and dryer are still going

4 devoured vanilla scones, or "scrums", according to isaac - sometimes love is dipped in icing and flecked with vanilla bean

5 AM the hour that lucas woke up and began to wander the hall - "pee pee potty pee pee potty..."

6 chores being neglected - dishes, folding, blah, blah, blah...

7 episodes of backyardigans, including one in french... all regrettable - dvd for sale

8 dollars left on my itunes gift card - shouldn't milli vanilli be free?

9 reminders to "flush, and wash hands" - 1 timeout after someone screamed "no!"

10 chipped toenails - 10PM pedicure

great expectations

if you don't think that sometimes the expectation of something is just as good, if not better, that the actual delivery. you have:

a. never ordered take-out

b. never bought shoes online

c. never seen this photo of lucas, waiting for fireworks...




we had a very nice fourth of july. little bit of sleeping in. quick visit with k and her family before their vacation departure. (so sad. i had a lump in my throat when we left. that might make me slightly pathetic.) bbq chicken, mound of potato salad, corn on the cob and strawberry shortcake with ragain's parents. watched fireworks in old roseville with the same sweet family who hosted us last year. we thanked them by breaking a glow stick and spilling it all over their blanket. see you next fourth!!(?)

hands full

isn't it kind of strange when people say, "wow. you've got your hands full" ?

i feel like i hear that a lot. depending on how it's said and who says it, it sounds like it might mean:

a. better you than me.

b. that looks like hard work. and everyone knows hard work is awful and to be avoided at all costs.

c. you are awesome and completely capable.

frankly, i prefer to think people mean "c" even if their tone of voice really sounds more like "a" or "b". but the phrase always makes me feel uncomfortable, maybe because:

a. if it's in reference to my boys, well, i like what i've got.

b. i like my job.

c. empty hands steal stuff.

actually, 8 1/2 years ago, i did have empty hands. and you know what you would have caught me doing with them?

a. rocking 5 lb bags of flour in the grocery line.

b. patting a loaf of bread's pillowy bottom.

c. flipping through the pages of martha stewart's baby magazine in my car on my lunch break.

my empty hands knew what they were missing. so, i'll take them full, thanks.



how lucas keeps his hands full

"quiet as mimes"

as a frustrating situation with my extended family has unraveled in a very disappointing way, i haven't felt like saying much. or, more accurately, i've felt like saying a lot that is probably better left undocumented.

for that reason, i think i'll leave the weekend recap for another (more cheerful) day.



lucas c. november 2008, looking like a french mime. or, at least what i imagine a french mime to look like.


recipe for cheer

1 13x9 inch pan of very fudgy brownies

2-15 phone calls to mom and dear friends

1 5-disc dvd set of the office: season 5

10 bright red toenails

6 listens to this song (you're welcome)

100+ hugs and kisses from anyone delightful

1 old photo that makes you laugh


sweetest of dreams to you. also, the quote from the title is from this book, on page 81. it might have been my favorite part...