Cherish Every Moment

This morning, my mother-in-law and I took Caitlin to this massive garden about 30 minutes from my house, to see all of the spring daffodils before they died off. This is almost every picture I took of Caitlin:

Some ladies asked me at one point if she was running away, and I said, 'No. She's just running.' Because that is ALL. SHE. DOES. 

EVER. 

This afternoon, Brigid facetimed me (in the kitchen) from her playroom (which is JUST DOWN THE HALL FROM THE KITCHEN!!!) to tell me that she was hungry and that she wanted me to bring her a piece of string cheese. 

I, being the terrible mother that I am, made her get up and get it herself, so I hope she learned THAT is not going to fly around here, but still...

You have to admire such a dedication to 'resourcefulness' at such a young age, I guess.

Scenes from a birthday party...

I know myself well enough to know that I don't have the emotional fortitude needed to plan an outdoor event. I don't do well with uncertainty, and since weather is nothing BUT uncertainty, I know that I need to plan all of my parties for indoor spaces. I need to have control of every detail or else I will do nothing but fret about what I don't have control over.

I know this about myself. And yet...guess who didn't let this knowledge stop her from planning a fifth birthday party at a farm where the only shelter was a roof large enough to cover six picnic tables in the middle of a field? And guess who did this planning for the middle of October, which can either be 80 degrees and hot or 50 degrees and raining?

Yes, that would be me.

In the two weeks leading up to Brigid's outdoor party, it rained significantly almost every day. I checked the weather EVERY SINGLE DAY in those two weeks, hoping that the day of the party would have a magically dry day, in the midst of our monsoon season. For the last two days, I checked the weather once an hour, hoping for a change.

It, uh, didn't change. We were guaranteed to have rain on the day of the party.

The morning of the party, Steve was relatively convinced that it would stop raining in time for the party in the afternoon, but I couldn't relax enough to think he might be right. So, I spent all morning texting everyone to tell them we might be moving the party to our house. I spent all morning cleaning the house for the potential move. Steve went shopping for party games and face painting supplies since I was convinced I wouldn't have the farm activities I'd planned to have to entertain the kids. We both checked the weather every five minutes. It finally seemed like things were clearing up right around party time, so we made the last minute decision to have the party at the farm.

And then we got to the farm, and it started raining harder. I was...not pleasant to be around at that moment, I'd imagine.

It did finally clear up, and I think that the party was a relative success. There was a petting zoo and a playground, some bouncy houses and a corn crib. Brigid got to run around with her friends, and everyone got cake and a whack at a pinata. And I only took about 6 years off of my life worrying about the rain.

Next year? I'm taking everyone bowling.

(Thanks, as always, to my brother-in-law, Greg, for taking better pictures of the event than I could ever hope to...)

Cuddles

Brigid slept in our bed last night, and since she was lying pretty much on top of me when my alarm went off this morning, she woke up as I tried to roll out of bed and into the shower. She asked me to cuddle with her, I told her I had to get into the shower. She asked me to come back to cuddle with her when I was done with my shower, I told her I had to go to work. She fussed at me, then fell back asleep.

She's lucky she's cute.

(And because my mom gets mad when I post picture of only one of them...this one is pretty cute, too.)

Let's even things up some, shall we?

I was told by my mother that it really wasn't fair for me to post so many pictures of Brigid yesterday, without including at least ONE of Miss Caitlin, if only to prove that I wasn't out taking Brigid for a walk while I left Caitlin sleeping alone in the house (I mean, that part wasn't explicitly stated, but I'm sure that's what she was getting at...*), and I realized she was probably right. My poor youngest child is already going to be suffering from birthday party envy as soon as she learns to understand what she's looking at in the various picture books we have lying around here and there, so do I really want her to think I couldn't be bothered taking pictures of her every other day of the year, too?

No. No, I do not.

Oh, that kid. She is so very, very cute. And...so very, very BLONDE.

Seriously. Where in the world did that come from? Why don't either one of my kids look like me in any way, shape, or form? This is so ridiculously unfair.


*I know that's not what my mother was getting at. She just wanted to see pictures of what used to be her youngest granddaughter, but is now her middle granddaughter, as my younger sister just added a THIRD GRANDDAUGHTER to the family. My parents are so excited about spoiling another little girl, and I ABSOLUTELY can't wait to get up to Indiana at the end of April to meet my very first niece. BABY!!!

Scootering

Last week was not such a great week for me. Because of various work activities I had going on for the end of March, I was in the office for 12-13 hours a day, which meant I missed seeing Caitlin completely on two of those days, and I only saw Brigid for a few minutes of cuddling after she had already fallen almost completely asleep.

I hate those weeks.

Yesterday was the first day of Brigid's spring break, and while I was working from home, the three of us took it easy for most of the day, to enjoy spending some time together and to make up for the time we'd missed together the week before. We ate breakfast on the couch. We colored. We watched some television. Brigid helped me make my in-the-car breakfasts for the rest of the week. We stayed in our pajamas until lunchtime, then took Brigid's scooter 'Pasta' out for a ride around the neighborhood.

(Brigid also wanted to walk the dogs while we were out there, but I have enough trouble keeping Brigid and the strollered-up Caitlin under control at the same time, so adding one or two idiot dogs to the mix isn't really a possibility on our solo walks.)

As is generally the case, Brigid's comment that she wanted to 'walk all day' far exceeded her actual walking ability, and she spent the last quarter of our trip sitting down on the sidewalk every few steps, to whine about how she couldn't walk any more and to ask for snacks that I didn't bring along with us (because we were only walking for MAYBE 30 minutes at the most, and who brings snacks on a 30 minute walk, when you've just had lunch less than an hour earlier?), but I'd say we had a pretty good time before we hit that point...

This kid, man. She just really is the best...

Strike a Pose

Nobody told me that four years old was going to be the age when my child would form her own opinions on what she should be wearing, but...yeah. Apparently, it is, and Brigid's first rule of fashion?

Always wear pink.

Her second rule is there's no such thing as too many pink tulle skirts, as this one was a new purchase this past weekend, and is something like one of four currently living in her closet. Rule number three is accessories MAKE the outfit, and rule four is that it's all in the attitude.

Obviously.

The Never-Ending Hike

On Sunday, it was 70 degrees and not raining, which made it the nicest non-working day we've had since...I don't know. December, maybe? I might be exaggerating, but I can't be completely sure. What I do know is that this winter has been terrible, and it just needs to go away, already. If I still lived up north, where it JUST WON'T QUIT SNOWING?!?!?! You'd probably find me rocking away in the corner at this point, in the fetal position, with my sound machine set to ocean waves and a picture of the beach gripped tightly in my hands...

As it is, we had a nice day before the cold weather came back to haunt us AGAIN, so we took advantage of it by hiking the falls about 45 minutes north of our house. The hike itself was only .8 of a mile, roundtrip, but as Steve finally gave in to Brigid's incessant begging for a camera and gave her our old digital camera, and as she is apparently the next Ansel Adams or something, we were on that .8 of a mile for something close to two hours. An effective aerobic workout, it was not.

But the family time was definitely worth it.

I couldn't get enough of Brigid in her little skinny jeans and ballcap PLUS her Converse and flannel. I mean...COME ON. It's like it was Halloween, and she'd decided to go as a stereotypical photographer, she was so dressed for the part. I took pictures of her taking pictures for maybe a quarter of the time she did it, before deciding that I maybe didn't need 45 pictures of her taking pictures, so I stopped. But I'd say that her eye for detail is pretty impressive...

We got a slideshow of Brigid's pictures when we got home, and she may need to work on the focus a little bit. Unless that's her signature look, I guess, because I never really can tell with these artistic types. At some point, though, I'll need to do a post of nothing but her pictures because what she finds interesting was pretty entertaining, and maybe we'll all decide that the blurriness was intentional.

She seemed pretty proud of herself, anyway...

Caitlin was not quite as impressed with the whole trip.

Oh. And then there was some nature stuff, too...

The park we were in had camping cabins everywhere, which is possibly the only way Steve will EVER get me to agree to a camping trip, and I'm excited to spend some more time around there when the weather starts to warm up a little. It's hard NOT to find peace hiking next to a mountain stream, even if you're having to stop every 30 seconds to watch your 4-year old take a picture of the side of a rock, so I really hope this becomes a regular thing for us.


PS: Mom, Georgia wants you to come visit...

Christmas

It's been almost a week since Christmas, and between my crazy end-of-the-year schedule at work, and the general insanity that is the holiday season, I never quite got around to documenting the day like I should.

BUT! Let it be known, the event did happen, and it was amazing. Brigid was just the absolute best part of the day (or days, I guess I should say, as we did Christmas Eve with Steve's parents and Christmas morning on our own, then Christmas with my parents right before New Year's Eve), running around, opening everyone's presents for them, and exclaiming how 'adowable' everything was that she opened for herself. She got everything on her list, plus a bunch of things that weren't, because, I don't know...Christmas shopping for the kid all throughout the year means you forget what you bought for her back in March, until you've already purchased the whole of the Toys R Us inventory in December. Or something like that.

Plus...grandparents. The kid gets some stuff from her grandparents.

Anyway, Brigid's by-far-greatest-gift-of-her-entire-life was a Flutterbye Fairy, which I had never even heard of until she picked it out of the Target catalog, but which she opened while shrieking 'Oh, I've been WAITING for one of these!', after she'd already called what the package was just by picking it up.

'I know what THIS is! I bet it's my FAIRY!'

Santa's elf needs to do a better job of camouflaging what's under the wrapping paper, obviously.

Not that I can fault Santa too much, though, because he really had to go out of his way to find this one for Brigid, since Steve and I waited until the last minute to finish our Christmas shopping and couldn't find it in any of the stores around us, ourselves. It seems, when it comes to Brigid's Christmas happiness, Santa's Amazon Prime membership comes in handy, along with his ability to pay a slight premium to whatever person bought up several of these fairies to resell to the general public. I think he'd think the premium was totally worth it, though, if he could hear Brigid tell people about how real her fairy is, because she can fly.

Caitlin, however, didn't get much out of Christmas beyond an appreciation for the deliciousness of Christmas wrapping paper, so I guess it's a good thing Brigid has enough excitement for both of them.

It was exhausting and messy and chaotic, and I can't stop talking about how I'm glad it's all over and ready I am to de-Christmas-fy the house, but if I'm being completely honest? I can't wait to start planning next year.