Play Dates and Pizza Makin'

Play dates are fun! I've come to learn is that it is actually less work for me to have a friend over because then my kids are occupied and happy and I get a ton of stuff done around the house! We love having Pippa's classmate, Bella, over whenever they don't have school. She is a little younger than Pippa and a little older than Lincoln so they are a perfect threesome.  In fact, Lincoln and she will be in the same class in the fall and I know Lincoln is excited about it. (Never mind Bella keeps calling him Logan.)

The weather is great these days and they mainly play outside. They like to play 'Nature Trackers' and explore out under the pine trees. They even 'climb' the lilac bushes, feeling very proud of themselves. Hopefully Bella's parents don't mind a little dirt under her nails and pine sap on her feet when she gets home. Always a sign of a good time!

I like to try to have a few activities planned but usually they are having such a good time playing that we don't get to them. Pizza making, however, is too good to pass up. (Besides, I gotta feed them something.) This day I gave them each a ball of dough, let them roll it out to their heart's content, and then put the toppings on. Super fun and delicious. My house is the cool house to play at! Yeah!

Father's Day Love

I want our kids to grow up making a big deal of certain holiday's like Father's Day. I know I am always pretty excited about Mother's Day so I wanted to make sure I didn't let Sto's special day slip past. So I scoured Pinterist for ideas, obviously. It had to be something that I could actually pull of with the help of the kids and something that Sto wouldn't be embarrassed to put in his office. A tall order, really. But I finally found the perfect idea. I just needed to find a nice quote about fatherhood. That took no less than 4 hours of internet searches.

Finally I was ready to the gather the supplies. You might not expect it, but my nurse's training came in handy. When it comes to supplies, my general opinion is to always grab extra. A wise practice in the ICU and when crafting with kids, as it turns out. As you can see by the picture, I had to make a print of each child's hand multiple time in multiple colors. It was painstaking and time consuming. But I was managing quite well and excited about how nicely it was turning out as I placed the very last hand print. Sigh of relief...and then…Pippa…slammed her hand down at the last second and ruined the whole thing. I might have yelled a little bit. It's possible. But then I took a deep breath and did the most logical thing. I painted over it with white paint. It didn't work. I started all over again. Pippa was very cooperative this time.

We presented our gift to Sto along with a mushy card on the big day and all the hard work paid off. I think he even hung it in his office! In the end it was all worth it. Pippa and Lincoln really do have the best daddy. He is so kind and generous. He's funny and smart. He's quick to laugh and hug. And he's pretty cute, too.

Strawberry Picking

It's strawberry season! Does it get any more delicious? Not in our world. Our neighbor has a great strawberry patch that we can and frequently do pick from. She keeps telling me to take some of her plants but I just can't figure out where to put them. But I need to figure it out, and soon! I can't go another year without my own strawberry patch. While I'm at it, I'd like to find a place for raspberries and even blueberries, too!

But I'm getting side tracked. We took advantage of a beautiful, if not somewhat soggy, day to go to Shadybrook Farm to pick strawberries. The fields were just dripping with fruit. We all pick as many as we could and then ate twice as much. The kids even did a pretty good job at picking the red ones instead of the green ones. So what they then smashed their bags around making mush out of half our stash. It didn't stop them from eating them.

We met a nice couple as we were leaving who found the mother load of humongous berries. Seriously, they were almost as big as Lincoln's face! The kids were both offered one and enjoyed every juicy bite. This is definitely a new family tradition that I will look forward to each year.

Car Ride Lullaby

Did I ever mention that Lincoln loves to sleep in the car? I don't blame him, I'm the same way. Put me in a car for any period of time and I'm out like a light. Lincoln is constantly falling asleep, too. And it usually happens 5 minutes from home messing up his nap for the rest of the day. So that's fun, obviously. It is pretty funny to watch him try to fight it, though. Well, honestly he doesn't really try very hard. But I do try pretty hard to prevent it. I'll sing all manner of songs, drive with all the windows down, shake his leg and tickle his foot. I think it's time to give up, though. It's a lost cause. I'll just enjoy his handsome, peaceful face instead.

What a cutie. 

Mother's Day Love

Mother's Day this year was especially fun. Since Pippa is in school now they do fun things for all the holidays. For Mother's Day all the moms were invited to come for brunch. Besides the obvious reasons, I was excited to go because rarely are we allowed in the classrooms. It's supposed to be the kids domain and parents don't tromp through the way they can in some other schools. So I've only stepped foot in it a few times and I've never really spent time there with Pippa! I had that first day of school excitement as I sat down for circle time with Pippa and her classmates. The kids sang a couple of songs for us, showing off all their moves. And then Miss Lori read us a book about a mother bear's most precious thing being her cub. How could I not get tears in my eyes as I was snuggling with one of my most precious things?! 

We had snack and then Pippa presented me with a gift of flower seeds and a pot that she decorated. We couldn't wait to go home and plant the seeds. (Which, by the way, grew into beautiful impatiens that we enjoyed all summer long!)

On Mother's Day morning the kids presented me with their gifts. Their excitement could barely be contained. They each gave me a hanging plant of their favorite color. Pink from Pippa and orange from Lincoln. A great way to spruce up our back patio for the season. Thanks family!

To The Sunshine State

It's that time of year again when we like to take a family vacation to Orlando, Florida. A far cry from the glamorous, adult vacations we used to like to take, I know. But that city is so darn family friendly it's hard to say no. This year we stayed at a place call Liki Tiki and the picture that comes to your mind when you hear that name is exactly right. Cheesy theme aside we had a great time at the resort swimming, playing in the sand at the little beach, playing on the playground, biking around the grounds, and of course hunting for geckos.


The kids are still too young to really appreciate, much less remember, Magic Kingdom so we didn't bother going there. But we love Sea World! We went to the dolphin show, which everyone loved. This was a relief to me because we went to the very same show last year and Lincoln (who was 10 months old at the time) started screaming the second the first dolphin jumped out of the water and I was relegated to the very back of the auditorium hoping to catch occasional glimpses of the show. This year was much more enjoyable. We also had fun riding the kiddy rides, playing in the little water park, and playing a few games. Pippa was lucky enough to win a rather large stuffed Shamu that she named Whaley Whale. That was likely the highlight of her trip.


We have some good friends who recently moved to Orlando which is great, not only because we get to see them, but they know of off-the-beaten-path type things to do. They introduced us to a really great petting zoo where the kids were able to hold baby chicks and go on a horse ride. They even encourage you to chase after ducks and chickens to pick them up. Super fun! Though, I did feel a little bad for those poor animals. Our friends' daughter, Bella, was really good at catching the chickens and was happy to show us how it was done. Watching Sto run around after them (never actually catching one, I might add) was hysterical. I wish I had video to show you. Here is a picture of Lincoln holding a chicken. You'll have to take my word for it, he's thrilled.


One thing that Sto was super excited about showing us this year was a place called Gator Land. He's been telling me stories for years about how he went as a kid and it was just about the best thing ever. Honestly, he's been going on and on about it. And I've been humoring him. Yes, dear, I'm thrilled to go to Gator Land this year. Yes, it sounds like so much fun and not corny at all. (I hope you can sense my sarcasm through the type) Well, I have to admit that while it was totally corny it was also a ton of fun. It may have been the best adventure we had the whole trip. There was a lot to do there besides just look at pits full of gators. We watched a show that was silly but entertaining. We saw a bunch of albino gators which were pretty creepy, actually. And they had some huge tortoises that the kids were able to feed melon to. I've never been up close to a tortoise before and it was really amazing. The sort of thing that gives you a sense of awe.

The most fun we had was feeding hotdogs to the gators. Everyone took turns throwing bits of hotdogs and watching them all fight to be the first to snap it up. I was a little nervous the whole time, I admit. I only went through the mental scenario -- of one of the kids falls in with the gators. I jump in after them, sacrificing myself, as I throw them into the air for Sto to catch -- a handful of times. But that wasn't a true worry. The birds eating them alive or taking a finger off, on the other hand, was a real possibility. I've never seen birds like this. They where huge (taller than Pippa) and looked prehistoric. And they were bold! They would grab the hotdog right out of your hand if you weren't careful!

Thankfully we all left with our fingers and noses and have some great memories to talk about throughout the year. I know Lincoln has not stopped talking about riding on the plane or the train (i.e. shuttle in the airport). Great fun had by all!

A New Chapter

I made the epic decision to start back to work this year. It's a decision that I did not make lightly and spent the better part of last year preparing for. I had to update my Nurse Practitioner certification which took a lot of work since I'd been out of the biz for a few years. Then I took my time looking for the right job and was beginning to get frustrated with the lack of part time positions out there. Just as I was starting to think I would need to compromise and take the less than perfect job just to get my foot in the door I happened to find a posting for a part time position in a family practice near Sto's office. Finally! Something I can at least apply to and use as practice to brush up on my interview skills. Little did I know that 2 weeks after pressing 'send' I would be hired and scrambling for a New Jersey license. I never dreamed I would work in NJ so I didn't have any of the paperwork done and I soon came to find out that state is about as slow as any state could possibly be. (You'd think they didn't want me to work in their state or something.) In the end, it took 4 1/2 months to finally get the privilege to see patients independently but I'm not holding any grudges. (Well, maybe a little one.) I'm really happy with this job and it's a great fit for our life. Just enough hours for me to maintain my self identity but not so many that I feel like our family is suffering or that I'm missing out on my kids. And I really like the people I work with, too. Bonus!

So as I started to make the adjustment from Poblete (pronounced the proper Filipino way) to Poblete (pronounced like a South Philly Italian) so did Lincoln begin his daycare journey. We went back and forth between the nanny option and the daycare option and settled on the latter. Overall we felt it was safer and certainly cheaper. I looked at a half dozen different places before deciding on a school just down the street from Pippa's Montessori school which is where Lincoln will be starting next fall anyway. I expected for him to have a bit of a hard time adjusting to it. In preparation I weaned him from all daytime nursing in the weeks leading up to his start date. A task that ended up being much easier than I expected, by the way. He is such a huge mama's boy and has been since birth that I figured he'd cry a lot at drop off and knew it might take a couple of weeks to get over that. Little did I know it would take longer. Much longer. After 2 months of near constant crying and refusal to participate in any and all activities while at school I knew we were nearing a breaking point. He was barely eating or drinking, barely napping (which was actually not that different from home), would start crying in the car 2 streets away from school, and was seriously glued to my hip all the rest of the time. He wouldn't even go to Sto for a second, something that was really getting to both of us!

I had an epiphany while at music class one day. Lincoln sat stoically on my lap for exactly half of the class and then, suddenly deciding he was comfortable, got up to dance in the middle of the room....10 feet away from me! He even sat on Miss Marilyn's lap during one of the songs. I started to cry with joy. You think I'm kidding, but I'm not. I'm pretty sure the other mom's thought I was nuts but Marilyn understood. She was as stunned as I was. For the rest of the day something another mama friend said about her daughter kept echoing in my head. She would describe her daughter as 'slow to warm up' and it would take her 20-30 minutes to get comfortable in new situations. That's when it dawned on me that Lincoln is the same way. Little did I know that 'slow to warm' is an actual label for a certain temperament but I soon learned about it after a couple of clicks on the google. Note the major change in the approach to rearing our second child. I was an expert on how the experts would have described Pippa but I was just rolling with the punches with Lincoln. Flying blind, sort of speak. Granted, Lincoln does have this way of doing exactly the opposite of what is typical, starting from birth. He just goes ahead and does things his own way. I should have caught on sooner, really. But better late than never.

So, the next day I stayed with him at daycare for 30 full minutes. Note: this is the opposite of the 'keep it short and sweet' strategy that is typically recommended. He did so well that day that the director actually called me half way through to let me know! Again, tears of joy. Don't get me wrong, he still screams (and I mean screams) at drop off and that is still hard to hear, but at least I know now that he gets over it and has fun with his day. He's eating his lunch and taking better naps than he ever has. We have really gotten over a hurdle and things are so much better all around. It's partly that he is more comfortable at daycare but I also know it's partly his stage of development. He is more independent, less needy of me, plays happily with Pippa or by himself, is napping more normally at home, and wakes up at a relatively acceptable hour in the morning (i.e. not 4:30am). I feel like I was waiting his whole life to get to this point. We still have our challenges, obviously, but I finally feel like they are just the usual sort of thing. I have always loved and adored my little boy, obviously, but I can say enthusiastically that I have really been getting a kick out of him lately. He's so funny and has such a great personality. It's fun to take care of him all day instead of being a chore and that is a better way to live for everyone.