Now We Are Six

I may or may not have been saving that blog post title for the last five years, one month, and seven days. I can neither confirm nor deny. (But you already know it's the truth, anyway.)

"'What day is it?'
'It's today,' squeaked Piglet.
'My favorite day,' said Pooh."

"'When you wake up in the morning, Pooh,' said Piglet at last, 'what's the first thing you say to yourself?'
'What's for breakfast?' said Pooh. 'What do you say, Piglet?'
'I say, I wonder what's going to happen exciting today?' said Piglet.
Pooh nodded thoughtfully. 'It's the same thing,' he said."

"Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That's why we call it the present."

"If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day so I never have to live without you."

-- All quotes by A.A. Milne

Ain't No Party Like A Preschool Party

'Cuz a preschool party has a trampoline and an ice cream truck. HOLLA!

In case you were wondering: no, we did not intend to cut her hair that short. I am significantly less than happy about it, honestly, and in fact had quite a nice little nutty hysterical fit, but I'll be damned if the kid isn't enough of a diva to pull it off. It's longer than it was at first, since it's had a week to grow in already. On the plus side, her shower time has been cut in half, and we don't spend 45 minutes alternately screaming and then staring dumbly at each other in the morning trying to detangle / comb out / style her damn fool head.

Synchronized noshing. This picture gets me REALLY EXCITED about the photo possibilities for the summer, because I am that totally dorky aunt who bought matching outfits and swimsuits for these two so that I can do the whole "identical cousins" thing for next year's calendar. Because don't they look so much alike? Except my niece looks like my dad and my daughter looks like my mom and so basically they look exactly nothing alike?

For the longest time I thought I hit the jackpot, because Shae has so much personality and pizzazz in pictures, but it turns out I actually hit the jackpot at least TWICE, because Makayla loves posing for the camera, too. You can't really tell here, but she was pedaling herself backwards on this trike and saying "Vroom vroom!" the entire time and it was the cutest thing EVER.

I asked Makayla to show me her lollipop, and she held it out to me like she was going to let me have a taste, and then yoinked it away at the last minute, all "HA ha!" like Nelson Muntz. Booger. Wiseassery runs in the family, obviously. Must be something in the water.

Hey, look! CAKEFACE! Oh, how I missed it.

What Happens In Pittsburgh Ends Up All Over The Internet

Blah blah grad school blah blah busy at work blah blah nervous breakdown blah blah PICTURES OF PITTSBURGH!

  

Almost the whole gang (minus me, of course, because SOMEONE had to take the picture and SPOILER ALERT it's almost always me), pre-gaming. The Pittsburgh Posse was already in town, but we met up with them later, at a German bar (don't ask, but it was AWESOME!) after we made fun of the predictably questionable fashion choices of today's Midwestern-adjacent college students. Please note that we managed to ensure that the two pregnant ladies in this picture still had a good time.

  

There was a pool at the hotel. OF COURSE we went swimming. Have you MET my family?

 

Secret agents and super-spies and minions of Doofenschmirtz Evil, Inc. would be infinitely more successful if they were all THIS FREAKING ADORABLE while they were busy plotting their assorted no-good shenanigans.

  

Yes, they're all looking at something different, but they're all basically facing the camera, so I'll take it.

  

Something tells me it's all happening at the zoo. Depending, of course, on what "it" is.
 

 

You don't get to see a giraffe ambling around in front of a skyscraper very often. It's kind of awesome. (Pittsburgh Zoo is very nice, BTW, but I would have preferred it if every child under the age of 12 in the entire city of Pittsburgh were not there with there families when we were. You know how I hate people.)

  

Please note that this kid will be five years old (!) in just six more days (!!) and ALREADY she is the approximate equivalent of ⅔ of one full-grown Mario Lemieux. I just can't even with this one.

Riding In Cars with Boys

My husband's going to have his hands full when Shae gets old enough to drive, because she really loves riding in cars with boys.

Especially, apparently, boys with dinosaur hats, or mohawks, or whatever.

Of course, who among us does not greatly enjoy just stomping the snot out of the gas pedal?

Looks like her new little boyfriend enjoyed the joyride, too (sunglasses added to protect the innocent).

At least, I think that's enjoyment and not sheer, abject terror.

Meanwhile, you might be wondering what I will be doing while my husband is dealing with our daughter riding in cars with boys.

I'll be in the nuthouse, with all the nuts and the squirrels, where I belong.

Up Up And Away

Not sure if I mentioned it or not, but I got a new computer for my birthday (an iMac) and I haven't yet figured out how to make good movies yet -- well, not that I ever did, really, but I had finally managed to learn how to work Windows Movie Maker just before we got the Flip camera, and that came with its own Magic Movie software (see example movie here) which doesn't run on the Mac, either because of Operator Malfunction or because it just doesn't, and while I think that iMovie is pretty easy to figure out eventually, I still haven't mastered it yet.

SO. ANYWAY.

Here is a movie of my kid doing her favorite thing in the world right this second -- or perhaps it is more precise to say, she is having her favorite thing in the world right this second being done to her. (That sounds potentially questionable, but it isn't, I swear.)

(Sometimes music seems like a weird choice, but it just somehow fits, you know? Timing of splashes is totally coincidental, because as I might have mentioned, I haven't figured out how to make proper edits yet.)

All Together Now

We had some special surprise visitors over the weekend, and it was pretty darned awesome.

My nephew is seriously the most adorable little boy in the world, and I can't ever get over how much bigger and older and awesomer he is every time I see him. I mean, he's totally the same little man that he was last year, but now he's even more so. And holy tomato, is this kid a chatty Cathy. I wonder if, when we go on vacation later this summer, my parents are going to get a word in edgewise, between Joey and Shaezie. Somehow, I don't think they're going to mind much if they don't.

Miss Makayla approves of this unexpected visit, bee tee dubs. Of course, she approves of most everything, including sunny days, swimming pools, and watermelon. (I double-dog-dare you to tell me that you don't want to EAT THAT FACE NOM NOM NOM. My goodness, is she delicious, or what? Cutest baby girl in the world. We make 'em pretty in our family, don't we? Lucky us.)

Shae approves of catching BIG AIR and jumping into the deep end without floaties, because she? Has been WORKING HARD at her swimming this year. She totally wants to be on the swim team, you guys. Which is amusing to the point of being almost hysterical, because she clearly has not yet learned that "being on the swim team" equals "a lot of early mornings doing lots and lots of laps while cranky old gym teachers who have a deep-abiding hatred of children blow their whistles at you and tell you over and over again to stop having fun."

OH AND ALSO! Joey is rockin' a Beiber haircut. I believe this is a visual demonstration of why the term "adorable little moppet" was coined. I'd totally eat this one's face, too, if he'd stand still long enough to let me. Although Makayla is crawling now, and extremely wriggly, so it's getting harder to catch her, too.

So, yeah, my time off was pretty amazing, in all the ways that only being around your whole family can be. Every day I get more and more excited about our big ol' family beach vacation this year, and how much extra awesome all the pictures are going to be with THREE beautiful, happy, delicious kids in them this time.

Over and Done

Shae's last swimming class for the spring was the Saturday before Easter. So these are the last pictures you'll see of her swimming for a few weeks, until Memorial Day or so, when we head out to California for the big vacation that I need so badly I just cannot even tell you. For serious: this will be the longest three weeks of my life, I think. I should probably start with the daytime drinking right now, but they continue to refuse to put vodka in the vending machine at work, those bastards.

I'm not sure what, exactly, Shae got out of these classes. She learned to float on her back, and she learned a lot of basic water safety, like not to go into water that is deeper than she can stand in unless she has some kind of PFD -- I think she might have known that already, but it's good to get reinforcement on this point from someone who is not me. Mostly we had an excuse to get out of the house for the last few months. I guess I'll take what I can get.

Once we get back from the O.C., summer will have officially started, and I'm going to find someone to give Shae lessons on the weekends. Lord knows she won't listen to me, but basically everybody else in my entire family is on a swim team or coaches a swim team or whatever -- I'm pretty much the only slacker ex-swimmer I know -- so I'm sure that someone would be willing to spend an hour a week in the pool for a few bucks. Probably the college-age kids. It's not like the have much else to do except mow lawns or whatever else The Kids doing for beer money these days. (No, I don't want to know. Don't tell me. And get a haircut. And get a real job. And get off my lawn!)

(Although, college-age cousins: If you read this, let me know your starting price. I was thinking $5, a bag of Doritos, and your choice of icy-cold beverage per lesson, but I am willing to negotiate. We can potentially get as high as $10 per lesson, but then the beverage is off the table because I Am Not Made Of Money. And also, you'll have to share the Doritos with Shae and her tapeworm with the hollow leg.)

Serenity Sunday #1

A new feature I am starting, which is a callback to an earlier post, wherein I discuss the Things That Are Making Me Happy Right Now, with a continuing hat tip to NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast. (Oh, and you know how some NPR shows have that "This is NPR" tagline at the end? This one definitely should, because even if you hate NPR for whatever reason, I believe that most people will find this particular podcast thoroughly entertaining. And their Facebook page is a hoot. Seriously, go check it out.)

Anyway: once again the things that are making me happy this week are garden-related. Because it's spring, and there are many things about spring that do NOT make me happy (ahem, allergies), but my garden ain't one of them.

This tulip is not from my garden -- it grows in the courtyard of the building where I work. Or at least it did until we had heavy rains and high winds earlier this week. Most of the time, the landscapers put in assorted annuals to fill in the "empty" spaces around the trees, but every year, there is one or two random bulbs that manage to sprout. I love the color of this tulip. It's so happy.

I love this flowering tree, also in the work courtyard. No idea what it is -- a crape myrtle, maybe? -- but it is lovely. I am not generally a fan of pink, but I love pink-flowering trees. I continue to adore weeping cherry trees, even though they're pretty much done at this point.

My lilac bush. I think I might have missed the "best" of the blooming, but I managed to get out there at least once to sniff the flowers. I wish that my allergies weren't so bad; I'd love to be able to snip some bunches and put them in every room of my house.

So that's what making me happy right now. What about you?

Happiness or Bust

In another tip of the hat to a podcast that I really enjoy -- NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour, which is truly outstanding and which also has a Facebook page that features the single best cross-stitch that I have ever seen anywhere ever as its profile picture -- I've decided to close out this week with a short list of Things That Are Making Me Happy Right Now.

• My gig over at Prime Parents Club. It is nice to be in the company of other talented writers who are equally awesomely flawed as people and parents. And yes, I actually do mean that as a compliment.

• These trees in the courtyard at work. No idea what they are, and I need to take a Zyrtec whenever I am anywhere near them because flowering trees = pollen = allergies = unhappiness, but as long as I take my pills, I am fine. And I love them.
• Related: weeping cherry trees. I love cherry trees in general, and weeping cherry trees in particular, and just this morning I saw one that was so pretty that my breath actually caught in my chest. I would have pulled over to take a picture but it was the middle of morning rush.
• My garden is also making me happy right now, even though the pictures you are about to see are terrible (cell phone + Instagram to cover some of the awful cell-phone-ness) and also my weeds need to be done and whatever. Still, I love the earliest spring flowers, when everything is super-saturated color and vibrance.

Those forget-me-nots are SO TINY, you guys. In just a few weeks they'll be tall and bushy and gorgeous and I love that color so very much.

• Not pictured: my peony shoots (still too hard to see in the weeds back there), the lilac buds (because I never trimmed the lilac bush or the butterfly bush back last year, and so it's hard to tell the new growth from the old scraggly stuff), the columbines (not old enough yet to tell the actual columbines from the random weeds).

So this is what's making me happy right now: writing, bad photography, and flowers. As the PCHH gang says: let me know what's making YOU happy in the comments.

Party People In The House

If you had told me four years ago that I would ever unironically fall in love with a possibly toxic neon-colored Hello Kitty birthday cake, that in fact it would turn out to be my favorite part of a pretty gosh-darned kick-ass kiddie party, I would have laughed right in your face.

But here we are. Just goes to show you what becoming a parent will do to you, I suppose.

And if, at the same time, you would have told me that I there would come a day when a child would be more excited about eating fistfuls of cheddar cheese popcorn and running around outside than she would be about opening presents at her own birthday party, I would have probably checked you for dengue fever or something.

But, again, here we are. We pretty much had to pull Shae into the house by her hair to get her to open her gifts. One of those rare, exciting opportunities to tear the ever-living snot out of some brightly-colored paper ON PURPOSE, and she wanted to be out in my parents' yard blowing bubbles with her friends.

At least she found SOME reason to get excited. Sunglasses apparently figure prominently in her happy place. I was a little bit disappointed at her reaction to the stuff we gave her -- a stuffed Perry the Platypus and a stuffed Stich, Hello Kitty jellybeans and a gummy dinosaur, a "princess plant" (which I think is actually some kind of orchid or something), and the pièce de résistance ...

... a sparkly, princessy pair of authentic Mouse ears for our upcoming trip to Disneyland -- these things apparently did not do much for her in the moment. She was far more stoked about her new beach towel, and her Belle fashion doll, and this little Nerf-like water cannon thing with a rubber duckie on the handle. Oh, and her new Phillies shirt. All these things, apparently, were much more thrilling than the stuff we got her that she actually asked for.

But my favorite part, aside from seeing all those friends and family members having a good time and spending the better part of an afternoon listening to the sweet sound of the unbridled laughter of about a dozen small children, was definitely the Hello Kitty birthday cake. I mean, MY GOD, it LIT UP. How cool is that? (Plus: that is QUALITY BUTTERCREAM FROSTING, y'all. Artificial colors AND real live honest-to-God sugar. YES PLEASE.)

One Bigger Happier

While all the kids were together, we managed to squeeze in our second (hopefully) annual family photoshoot -- now with 50% more grandchildren and 100% fewer parents and at least 300% more chaos!

It's not a bad picture, but it's not great. It was much colder than it was last year when we tried this, and this was my first time attempting a quasi-sort-of-maybe-kind-of professional-ish shoot that involved posing an infant. I forgot to remember that getting the smallest of my models to look at the camera was going to be the EASY part. Shae's got something on her face and major hat-head and you can see the tags on the baby's blanket, but at least they're all not looking at the camera in approximately the same general direction.

By the time these kids are all in college, I should have this figured out.

What we actually wanted to do, originally, was get all the kids to pose together with their assorted-colored bunny ears on. Um, yeah, I don't what particular kind of crack we were smoking when we came up with that harebrained (HA!) scheme, but we were at least able to get nice pictures of them individually with the ears on. Joey was the one I worried about, because he does not really strike me as a headband sort of guy, but we let him play with a rake while he had the ears on, and he gave us surprisingly little trouble.

I would like one of these in my Easter basket, please. Are not those cheeks so perfectly, delectably nommable? (What is it about babies that turns people into cannibals, anyway? It has been a very long time since I have seen a baby and DIDN'T think to myself, "That head looks gorgeous and melonious and DELICIOUS." Especially in my family, where we make babies with heads like perfectly ripe cantaloupes. I mean, look at this example -- I JUST CAN'T EVEN.)

This is our fourth consecutive year with this particular pair of rabbit ears, and I for one will be terribly sad when they are handed off to the next "generation." These might be one of those things, like the sweater she was wearing the first day that we met her, that we keep in a special box in the bottom of her closet and never pass on, because they are so much a part of our family history. (Oh, hey, guess who has been working on a birthday movie for the last two days and feels really nostalgic and old today? THIS BLOGGER.)

Wide Open Spaces

The kids -- by which I mean Shae and Joey plus my sister and I -- spent a lot of time running around outside this weekend, even though it was not particularly warm and not particularly green. We still managed to have a good time, all things considered.

Apparently rolling down the hill over and over and over again until your mother is just about ready to puke is the COOLEST. THING. EVER.

Climbing trees with your aunt is also apparently hella fun. (And it's not like your mother is going to do that with you -- what, and fall out and break your arm and die a horrible death like that guy in A Separate Peace? No thanks.)

Ditto, apparently, running wild in the streets like some kind of feral succulent wild child. Well, okay, running as "wildly" and as "ferally" and as "succutlently" as is possible with half a dozen adults around. You know, supervising.

My daughter thinks that kissing someone on the cheek for a really long time -- like, two seconds, which IS practically an enternity in kid years -- is "making out." Let's not tell her otherwise until her father is 70, okay?

Oh and we let the kids pretend to drive the car. That was probably the highlight of the entire weekend, and the one thing that they both wanted to do over and over again (except roll down the hill, which I DON'T EVEN).

It was so much fun, you guys. And I have like 900 more pictures to sort through yet!