bedtime

One of OM's favorite places to play is our bed. All sorts of adventures happen up here. Most Saturday and Sunday mornings they get in bed with us and we make caves with the covers. Lately they pretend that someone is the mommy and someone is the baby and they take care of each other...

or then they decide to "fight"...

or play monsters and ghosts...

or pillow fights...

and their favorite is trampoline time. They usually holler for me to check out their cool moves: 'check out this cool move mom, it's the batman super-duper jump move'..they all have names, even baby sis names her moves, "princess moves," "starfish moves," etc. Then they nose dive into the pillows, jump as high as they can in the air and then land on their booty's...it's pretty great.

playlist

It was requested, so here it is, my 2009 H2C playlist:

Radiohead, Jigsaw falling into place

Pitbull, I know you want me

KT Tunstall, Hold On

2Pac & Snoop, 2 of Americaz most wanted

The Vines, Get Free

Jamie Foxx, Blame it

Adele, Chasing Pavements

Kelly Clarkson, Since U been gone

The Hives, Hate to say I told you so

MGMT, Electric Feel

Kings of Leon, Use Somebody

The Killers, Mr. Brightside

Vampire Weekend, The kids don't stand a chance

Malacates Trebol Shop, Ni un centavo

T.I. & J.T., Dead & Gone

Oren Lavie, Her Morning Elegance

Pete Yorn, For Nancy

Kanye West, Gold Digger

Lady Gaga, Just dance

Jack White & Alicia Keys, Another way to die

Gorillaz, Dare

Dixie Chicks, Ready to run

Interpol, Evil

Leona Naess, Ghosts in the attic

Please, please, please get me through the first 6.4 miles. Last year I made a 2+ hour playlist and ended up playing Kanye's Stronger over and over and over. It was the only thing that kept me moving.

Today my coworker (I'd love to say colleague but I'd feel like a nerd and slightly more ridiculous than I feel when I wear my pager at work..you never know when a mama might be donating cord blood) Lauren, told me that our supervisor told her for the 10th time that she wants to hire me full time. She's told me too but I usually try and change the subject. Lauren doesn't care b/c she's in med school and has her sights set on bigger things.

On one hand I'd feel like a complete idiot if I turned the offer down because I love my job (well, I like it a lot) and it would be a great opportunity. On the other hand, I love my kids (well adore and cherish) and I do not want to give up seeing their smiling, mischievous faces M/W/F. I would so love a fancy, energy efficient washer and dryer but OM just suck me in with their adorableness so I need to be here..

I'm pretty sure.

Especially because I almost had a heart attack the other day as I drove past our neighborhood elementary school and noticed the kiosk was advertising enrollment for next years kindergarten class..which Owen will be a part of! Holy crap! NOT YET!!!!!

Today when I picked up OM from preschool one of O's teachers was explaining to me that when O woke up from his nap he was feeling kind of funky and didn't want snack so they took his temperature and checked his head for lice.

Lice? I asked.

Ya, we sent 14 kids home today with lice.

FOURTEEN?

Ya, you should probably buy some lice shampoo just in case..for you too.

Great, thanks.

Childcare kinda blows sometimes.

BFF's

They really are. BFF's. Lately Maya's been calling Owen papi, shortened from Big Papi, which Dan and Woody taught her to say ('hey Maya, who's your favorite baseball player'..'big papi' she'd say and they'd laugh)...I'm not sure why she started referring to O as big papi but now she'll tell me, 'I miss papi' when he's not around. It's pretty cute.

I love playing with bubbles. Luckily so do OM so we do it a lot. It's so easy and so endlessly entertaining.

This next picture is from today @ lunch. I had planned on doing it for breakfast but got distracted. I woke up around 4:00 a.m. today, actually before that but I got out of bed around then. I kept waking up thinking I hadn't made my playlist yet for my run this weekend and the only way to get peace was to go do it.

I've been surprisingly productive since then..my bathroom is clean the floors are vacuumed, the outside toys are now in piles of what stays and what goes and I even washed my extremely filthy (white) bed skirt that Star noses repeatedly every morning after she gets back from her run with Woody. The gentle leader bugs her so she likes to scratch her nose to get rid of the feeling I guess. Anyway, now I need to go iron it since those babies never look good straight out of the dryer.

One more thing: Yesterday when I picked OM up from preschool I went to Owen's room first and saw the dreaded ACCIDENT REPORT sticking out of his file. Ugh. It read..

How was child injured? Owen was running when he collided with another child.

Nature & location of injury? Light bruise on the right side of his forehead near temple area.

Action taken? Provided TLC, declined ice

Outcome? Owen took a water break for a few minutes and then returned to play.

Then I went to Maya's room and she too had an ACCIDENT REPORT in her file. Her's read:

How was child injured? Maya was jumping off the loft onto the carpet floor.

Nature and location of injury? When Maya jumped off and landed on the floor she rolled forward and hit the top of her head on the floor.

Action taken? Maya iced her own head, sat and read a book.

Outcome? returned to play.

These two little reports sum up so well the differences between Owen Steven & Maya Ginger. I can totally picture Owen getting upset, sensitive soul that he is, telling them to get that ice away from him and just needing some time alone.

Maya on the other hand was probably intrigued by the idea of holding ice to her head and just kept on moving forward with her day.

Anyway, need to go add these to the bin of items I'm saving for them. I'm sure they'll think they're fascinating one day, right?

Weekend peacemakers

The three amigos in front of Kells...

Today we went down to the new Saturday Market on the waterfront and met Sophie and Jason. I've never been a fan of the market, as it's usually filled with drug pushers, pachouli odors (which I don't mind in small doses), and questionable street attire but they're trying to revamp it and make it more family friendly and overall they've succeeded. I still saw a guy walking his girlfriend/wife on a leash and Jason & Sophie walked by a rally where all the women protestors were topless but the food smelled good, the belly dancers were entertaining and OM had fun in the fountain.

Actually we've had one of those super swell weekends where our focus was on relaxing and not doing but we ended up doing a lot in a very relaxed way.

Yesterday I ran seven (freaking) miles trying to prepare for H2C. I was checking out my legs, thinking that my first one was 6 miles exactly but it's 6.4 which is longer:) and totally freaking me out now. My body is more of a 4-5 mile-type and after 6 I feel weird.

Then my friend sent me a link to this and I started to feel like I should just be thankful no one got lost last year, and I didn't have to run 3 extra miles to meet at the next exchange. It describes really well what it's like, except I'm on a Nike team filled with boys that have no idea about "mamaraderie" but were/are supportive nonetheless.

After my run we went to the park and got in some good swinging and a long session of duck, duck, goose which was one of the sweetest things I've ever seen: Maya screaming goose at the top of her lungs and Owen making sure everyone got turns and not even telling M she's doing it wrong when she goes the wrong way to call out duck, duck, duck...GOOSE!

On our walk back home, well into the six o'clock dinner hour, we stopped @ Alby's with NO plan and the first thing I saw were nectarines and avocados next to each other and remembered this recipe and immediately got a plan...grabbed some chicken boobs, a couple of lemons and some beer, finished our walk home and within 20 minutes we had grilled chicken with avocado nectarine salsa, lemon couscous, and salad. Yum.

While we made dinner OM watched Lady & the Tramp. Later were baths, popsicles, stories, bedtime, W and I watched Hot Fuzz and then off to bed. Pretty sweet.

rose garden

I was a tad nervous that our sassy little thing might rip one of those blooms right off, putting us $500 in the hole! Thankfully she sniffed her way through the rose garden and mercifully listened to us like a good little girl:)

My favorite rose (this time) was the purple moonberry rose (not pictured) that smelled like heaven, it really did.

Portland is cool for a million reasons (though for me it's doomed to be incessantly complained about cuz of that stinkin', incessant rain:) and one of them is this beautiful rose garden that takes my breath away every time. It smells good and looks good and has a sweet view of the city that these photos don't show b/c..duh-duh-duh, it was cloudy. :)

But we had a super great time with G'parents May that came from North Carolina to see us and then Woody and Elee's godmother Madonna was in town too w/ her husband David so we packed a picnic and checked out the cool summer entertainment @ the ampitheater.

Owee setting up our corner of the lawn...

The first part was the Oregon Ballet Theater performing some dance numbers to Cole Porter songs.

Elee looking not so sure about the dancing but AJ dug it:) I loved it too. It was the closest thing to So You Think You Can Dance, the BEST show on TV (okay, when Lost comes back on I might change my mind and if I had cable I'd probably be absorbed in the sweet, sweet drama of Mad Men but, man I love SYTYCD!!)... Especially since this past season they had a ballerina on the show. Thank goodness they're coming back this fall.

[Side note: It is enormously relieving (and entertaining) to not be studying or writing or worrying about studying and writing and just watch TV for two hours. In December it will be a year since I graduated and I'm still STOKED every weekend when I can just chill with the fam and not study.]

Back to the blog...okay, the Portland Cello Project was after intermission and they were swell and so was this guy, Run on Sentence, who played with them for a couple of songs. Then the night turned even better when someone covered The A-Ha's, take on me and then another covered George Michael's one more try..awesome!

We are pretty excited around here b/c we're going to Canada next month for our anniversary and get to bring OM with us (yes, can't go anywhere without our two hilarious goofballs:) and get to stay at a fancy resort in the mountains (courtesy of the much appreciated generosity of g'ma and g'pa May:). Yay! Then in December we're going to hang in the sunny gloriousness of Florida and visit more grandparents (!), the happiest place on earth, and Sea World..yay again!

And I'm also excited to be taking a sewing class with my friend Debi. It's kind of weird I'm excited b/c the last sewing class I took was in 7th grade Home Ec. in Alexandria, VA and everyday I was there I wanted to heave that friggin' sewing machine out the 2nd story window, as all I could manage to do was make knots with the thread and my spastic foot peddle would zoom ahead or jerk and jolt along making all my seams look hideous. Here's hoping that 20+ years has taught me a bit more patience.

AND (sheesh) I quit FB a few weeks ago. My sister, as expected, noticed within hours and I miss her status updates and banter with our brother but overall it's such a time waster and I've got too much to do (and I thought I'd limit my self-promotion to one venue).

Ahh, and: I'm doing Hood to Coast again this year. I'm pretty sure last year I said I'd never do it again but then once it's over you feel so deliriously happy that you forget and need a new challenge. I'm excited though because my legs this year are a little longer (6 miles, 5 miles, 5.23 miles) but flatter, yes! And I don't have to pump milk every couple of hours, huge bonus:)