If It Takes a Whole Life

Required Florida Porch Swing Photos

2012-01-16T18:14:00.000-05:00

Finally going through holiday pics. Thought I'd start with the customary porch swing photos.

Hi. I'd like you to meet my two children, Less-Excited-About-Family-Photos and More-Excited-About-Family-Photos.

Ah, that's a little more like it. A happy medium.

Couldn't convince Gabriel to sit for individual shots but Clementine was more than willing.

We've been doing these porch photos a loooonnnngggg time. Here are the pics from last year if you
want to see how much the kids have grown:-)

You're not ready for the cuteness

2012-01-16T17:33:00.000-05:00

With the title of this post, I'm trying to give you fair warning. But there's really no amount of mental preparation that can help you come to terms with the ridiculous adorableness that is...

Clementine in her very first ballet costume.

I'm not wrong, am I?

Clementine has been begging, pleading, and praying to take a ballet class. I don't even know where she came up with it because it's honestly not something I've been pushing. At. All. But she had it in her head she wanted to do it. She's asked on and off for months but after the holidays, I started getting it every single day. Morning, noon and night. I'd say things like, "I'll call and look into it," and a few hours later, she'd come looking for me, asking if I'd called. When I told her I'd e-mailed a few places, she wanted specifics. "Mommy, did you color a ballet picture and send it to them on the e-mail?" Doh. I forgot that part.

It turned out to be trickier than I thought it'd be to find a Saturday class. It would seem that in our neck of the woods most prima ballerinas must have stay-at-home mommies because I only found one place with Saturday classes. And they were full. I took a cue from my darling daughter and begged and pleaded... and sure enough... a space opened up and she's in.

So then I went and cleaned out her college fund paying for the class and the gear:-)

When the girl at the local dancewear store rang me up and I let out a little squeak at the final tally, she said, "Yeah, you're gonna want to try to steer her towards modern dance as she gets older." "Why?" I asked, clueless. "No shoes," she said.

So far, it feels like it'll be worth every penny.

Deep thoughts related to Elvis

2012-01-16T17:14:00.000-05:00

We checked out the VMFA's Mummy exhibit this afternoon, which turned out to be a terrific way to spend Martin Luther King Day.

While we were there, we wondered on over to this Alfred Wertheimer photography exhibit, "Elvis at 21." The photographs were beautiful... all of these big, black and white shots of Elvis just before he became really, really big.

It struck me, walking through the exhibit and answering questions of Gabriel's like, "Who was Elvis?" and "What did he sing?" that this isn't what it was like for me...

I learned about Elvis from my father. My kids are learning about Elvis in a museum.

What will museums be teaching my grandchildren about the way we live now?

Happy New Year

2012-01-04T21:28:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year!

New Years Resolution #1: Blog More.

Perhaps a real resolution post will present itself at some point but, for the time being, suffice it to say that it's 2012, and I have finally extricated myself from my pajamas. It was a good break.

I've got more holiday posts coming but some big news is that, as of New Year's Eve, Kevin and I have known each other/been together for an entire decade. We met before the stroke of midnight... December 31, 2001... at a college New Year's party a friend of ours threw. The rest is history.

For a few years, I hung onto a photo someone had taken that night. There were a bunch of us standing there in the kitchen of this townhouse, and there we are in the photo, totally unaware that our lives are about to change. In one of our moves, I lost the photo. It's a bummer. So you don't get treated to a real before-and-after. This is close:

It's starting to feel like there's a lot of distance between us and that long-lost photo. Kevin reverted to his original hair color. I lost my natural hair color:-) We've lived in three states. Bought two houses. Earned a few degrees. Oh yeah, and become parents to two children far more fabulous than any we could have dreamed up in those early days.

I'm signing up for another 10 years. And then 10 after that. And 10 after that. And...

Clementine 101

2011-12-21T20:46:00.000-05:00

I tore this pic out of a magazine a while ago, meaning to frame it. And then I saw this bright green frame at Target the other day for $5.99 and it fell in my cart.

Lest Clementine ever get confused, this should help her clarify the difference between a clementine, a satsuma, and a tangerine:-)

How Gabriel spent his day

2011-12-21T20:38:00.000-05:00

I worked from home today. Clementine was at daycare but Gabriel and Kevin are both out of school. So that I could concentrate, the rule was no T.V. and no video games for the G-man. Quiet self-reliant entertainment was the goal.

The house had been quiet for a good long while when Gabriel came to find me.

"Guess what, Mom?!?!" he said, looking very pleased with himself.

"What?"

"I'm playing Angry Birds!"

"But I said no video games!"

"Come see, come see, Mom!"

With a bunch of leftover Amazon boxes, he created a real-life Angry Birds game.

I gotta give the kid some points for ingenuity.

Ruff, Ruff

2011-12-21T20:24:00.000-05:00

Poor Gabriel told me the other day that he was trying to decide between getting a real dog and getting a remote control dog. I asked him which he thought he'd prefer. He told me that he'd like a real dog but that if a remote control dog could walk him to school, then maybe it'd be all right. Hope he wasn't holding his breath on the real dog because tonight the Chanukah aardvark delivered on his request... sort of:-)

Kevin and I are not yet ready to take on the responsibility of a living, breathing dog (and simultaneously raise small children) but when it comes to remote control dogs, those we can deliver!

Oh, the Iron-Man costume has nothing to do with Chanukah and everything to do with Gabriel's personal hierarchy of needs:-) Halloween costumes are worn year-round.

It's a question of perspective

2011-12-20T21:04:00.001-05:00

I overheard the kids playing on Sunday. They were each carrying a naked baby doll (all Clementine's babies are in a constant state of undress:-) and Gabriel was clutching a pretend cell phone to his ear. I heard him say into the phone, "Yeah, we just got home from the hospital with these babies but we haven't gotten them adopted yet."

My gift pick for the holidays

2011-12-19T21:20:00.001-05:00

If you're still struggling to fill out a few more nights of Chanukah or find one or two more presents for under the tree, might I suggest a book?

And this won't just be any book.

Oh no.

This'll be a book written by our friend and former neighbor, Anne Ursu, who happens to have written an irresistible tale called Breadcrumbs.

Don't take my word for it. NPR thought it was irresistible enough that they made it their December Kids' Book Club Pick. <---Go read all about it.

The book is about a little girl named Hazel who ventures into the woods, looking for her best friend, Jack. A modern day Snow Queen.

Interesting side note: Hazel just so happens to be adopted from India. Anne was very, very kind and e-mailed me recently to tell me that the year we lived next to each other in Massachusetts, when Gabriel was just two years old, inspired her to write Hazel as an internationally adopted child. Flattery will get you everywhere:-) I'm beyond touched.

A review reads, "The crumbs that lead us are stories, which point the way toward understanding and acceptance of loss and sorrow and change, and which shout at us of hope and friendship and love."

Now of course, since I'm reading this with Gabriel and chapter books are relatively new terrain for us, I can't verify with 100% certainty that the end is as illustrious as the beginning... but in an effort to get this blog post written BEFORE holiday shopping is complete, you're going to have to have a little faith and just go buy the book. If you don't love it, you can take it up with Gabriel;-) Impossible, I say. You'll love it. Without a doubt.

Two blogs collide... Lost Planet Style

2011-12-18T21:52:00.000-05:00

Sometimes people ask me about the blogging thing and whether it freaks me out to share stuff about my family online. And I mean, sure, if you're blogging... it's healthy to have some trepidation as you wade into the waters of the unknown. But, overall, I tell people that blogging is fabulous and that the benefits far outweigh the drawbacks. Because the benefits go a little something like this:

Two women meet on an online adoption forum. Stalk each other's blogs for a period of, I dunno... YEARS. They read through the wait, the homecoming, the happily ever after and all the spilled milk in between. They comment, they post, they eventually even e-mail.

And then, miracle of miracles, one fine day in December, their daughters meet.

And all that blog stalking turns out to have just been a precursor to a friendship that was meant to be. Born two months apart in Ethiopia, these girls were meant to be friends.

Those of you Ethiopia mamas who follow Mindy's blog will be green with envy right about now... yup, we have been to the Lost Planet:-)

I may have squealed when we arrived and everything looked EXACTLY as it does in the online version of their lives;-)

Don't know what I was expecting exactly but, ya know... small pleasures.

Two blogs collide. We have a hunch you're gonna be seeing guest appearances on both blogs for the next 15+ years at least. By then our girls will probably be doing the blogging and we mamas will be lucky if we get to make guest appearances on theirs!

Global Warming

2011-12-15T20:52:00.000-05:00

You can't tell me there's no such thing as global warming.

Gabriel wore shorts to go see the James Plaza's Christmas lights. If you had told us we lived in Florida, we would have believed you. It's outrageously warm for mid-December in Virginia.

Not that we're complaining!

Parade sightings

2011-12-04T21:50:00.001-05:00

We had a really nice slow weekend, which was sooooo great. There was a parade and a Christmas party and Sunday school and a Guatemalan adoptive families holiday potluck... like I said, slow. It's all a matter of perspective!

We did the parade mainly because Kevin and Gabriel were in it. Kevin's fitness group was participating, so there was a spot for Gabriel to ride along with some other kids in the flatbed of a big truck going about three miles per hour. For two hours. Sounds like a good time, no?

He loved every second of it. Kevin and the grown-ups stopped along the way to do push-ups and other really random exercises.

Like I said... random:-)

Clementine and I stood curbside for what turned out to be the better part of the morning. We sipped some hot cider and chatted with our curb neighbors and just generally looked cute while doing nothing.

But lest you think it was all fun and games, I'll have you know we had to sit through quite a few very scary "floats" before Kevin and Gabriel appeared on the scene.

Seriously? They have a group? With local affiliates? Have they not gotten the memo that small children uniformly consider them to be frightening?!?

Okay, this one was a little bit awesome:

Hope everyone had an awesome weekend!

Rudolph gets a Bandaid

2011-12-04T21:27:00.003-05:00

You know the economy's not in great shape when this happens to Rudolph during Richmond's 2010 Christmas Parade:

And this becomes the solution for the 2011 Parade:

That'd be a larger-than-life Bandaid you're looking at:-) It's resourceful. For sure.

Girls don't fight

2011-12-04T21:13:00.000-05:00

Gabriel's teacher is reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe in class. He seems to be eating it up because I'm suddenly hearing lots about fawns and snow queens and turning various entities to stone. So stuff is getting in. In bed tonight, I dropped some knowledge bombs on him and started asking him about Lucy and Susan. "How'd you know about them?!?!" he asks. I tell him he's not going to believe it but I also read this very special book of his. We talk some more, discussing various plot points. The fawn's in jeopardy and whatnot. I tell G that I bet Lucy will fight to save him... doesn't he agree? "No, Mom," he tells me. "Girls don't fight. They just look pretty and stuff." Dear lord. My son has a mother who works full-time and a father who cooks dinner every night and he has still managed to grow up with a nice little set of 1950s values:-) Are they still airing reruns of Xena: Warrior Princess somewhere? We're working our way through Harry Potter right now but as soon as we're through, I'm gonna need to look for a few books with some very strong female protagonists to set him straight!

Feeling thankful (and my lovely giveaway winners will too!)

2011-11-24T21:09:00.000-05:00

I'm crawling out of my food coma for just long enough to announce the blog's three lovely Shutterfly holiday card winners. Using a couple of very random number generators (I asked my sofa-lounging sisters to shout out numbers) we came up with three winners: Kathryn, Niles Jess (or Jess Niles?), and Tabitha! I'll e-mail each of you your coupon codes and you can spend the rest of the weekend designing the perfect holiday card to send out to your nearest and dearest!!!

Now I'm off to try to find room for pie:-)

It's holiday card time... with a giveaway

2011-11-23T06:21:00.000-05:00

I have been checking things off my list this week. And spending a number of late night hours on shutterfly.com, where first I finished piecing together our London photo book and then I got busy on our holiday card.

Before I get on with the show and write about the holiday card, I'll take a brief photo book detour. The photo books have been the absolute best when it comes to shoving tons of pics I love in one place. I still have to do some weeding to come up with a final book but compared to the blog posts I did while I was in Europe, the books are much more thorough and help preserve a lot of really nice memories.

I try to wait until Shutterfly runs a good sale on the photo books and yesterday a nice one ended, so I hustled to get our London book done by midnight. It'll join the growing collection. Istanbul, Paros, and Santorini are already sitting on the shelf.

I like the 8"x8" size with the hard-backed photo covers. The books fit on a bookshelf and don't take up too much room on a coffee table. Not that I can leave these on a coffee table with the G-man and Clementine around:-) So the goal is to get Italy done over the holidays. Then I'll "just" have mainland Greece to worry about. We were in Italy nine days and I MAY have taken a gazillion pictures, so whittling them down is going to be an issue. Shutterfly caps you at a hundred pages! Doh.

Anyway, onto the holiday card.

The big news is that Shutterfly added photos on the BACK of their flat stationary cards this year. Considering we were traveling for a fourth of the year this year, I was having an ISSUE (yes, all capitals... I know) deciding which travel pics to incorporate into the card, especially once Jen took such adorable pics of the fam earlier last month. Not to worry (not that you were!)...

The solution:

Cute family pics on the front...

Some of our favorite travel pics on the back...

I like the template I chose but the only thing I can't figure out is our Top 10 list. It's a lot of pressure to come up with 10 fabulous things that happened in a year and not worry that you're overlooking other fabulous things that happened. I can think of a few already! So if you get one of these suckers in real life, don't hold me to this list! It's subject to change:-)

The good part about these two-sided cards is some of the templates have room for tons of text and just one or two pics on the back, so if you're the type who usually includes a holiday letter with your card, you could probably skip that step and just copy and paste your letter directly onto the card... provided you could be choosy with your words. (If anyone's ever received a holiday letter from Mark... Mark, this tip does not apply to you! Carry on with your two-sided, seven-point font self:-)

Here's the fun part. Shutterfly gave me some free holiday cards for writing this post (which is awesome since I totally would have ordered them anyway) AND I get to give away a set of 25 FREE holiday cards from Shutterfly to three commenters. So, in the comments, tell me whose adorable mug you'd put on your Shutterfly holiday card, and I'll pick three random winners on Turkey day. Make sure you give me a way to get in touch with you--either a blog address that's got contact info or an e-mail address--so that I can send the lucky winners their coupon code.

Our family pics are back

2011-11-14T21:17:00.000-05:00

So, our pics from Jen Sinclair Photography are back and she did such a great job with them. If you're reading this, thanks a billion Jen! If you live in Richmond, give Jen a buzz and you too can be paparazzi-ed all over your neighborhood:-) It's fun... I promise!

For your viewing pleasure, I've included a few (okay, a bajillion) of our favorites:

Saturday football

2011-11-13T21:23:00.001-05:00

"Dad? Can we play tackle football?"

"Buddy, tackle football's really hard with only two people."

Technically, there were three people.

But she tired of football quickly and was much more interested in perfecting her dance moves.

An autumn hike

2011-11-13T21:03:00.003-05:00

I balanced a consumerism-laden Friday (Clementine and I took a trip to IKEA) with a totally back-to-nature Sunday. In between, I got a haircut, Clementine got braids, and oh... USC beat Florida;-)

We took a love-er-ly through a portion of the Shenandoah National Park, making our way along Skyline Drive and stopping at various spots along the way to hike.

With Gabriel's energy levels, the kid could move mountains... or at least very large boulders:-) He hiked. All. Day. Long. Amazing stuff.

Both of the kids' enthusiasm served as a nice reminder that the four of us do the absolute best and have the most incredible days when we're doing something active that engages everyone equally. It's one of the things we loved about Greece... the adventures we got into as a family. All of us, together, wandering, figuring stuff out as we went along.

When we go on adventures, we're always surprised at how we never hear the kids bicker or complain. During a normal day at home, I can hear 100 complaints about the temperature of their hot chocolate or the volume of the television or who hit whom when. But when we're outdoors and active, it's all smiles, nearly all of the time.

Even little Clementine walked a good portion of the day. At one point, well into our second hike, she told Kevin, "I want to do one more hiking, and then I need a nap." She wound up catching that nap in her carrier as her poor father walked UP hill about 1.8 miles. Ah, the joys of fatherhood:-)

The day trip made us antsy for the road not traveled. It's been nearly six months since we arrived home from Greece. It's making us wonder... where should we go next?

Paparazzi

2011-11-03T06:47:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago, the talented Jen Sinclair traipsed around our neighborhood, grabbing some shots of us exploring our own backyard. Believe it or not, these are the first professional shots we've had taken since Clementine came home from Ethiopia. (Don't feel TOO bad: it's not like the child hasn't been photographed PLENTY:-)

The kids totally embraced the idea and started acting like paparazzi-ed celebrities almost immediately.

Jen's sending me a CD in the next couple of days, so I should have lots of good shots to share soon!

It's all fun and games until...

2011-11-02T06:30:00.000-04:00

Something tells me that Gabriel was not following manufacturer's instructions on this one.

Happy Halloween!

2011-11-01T20:30:00.001-04:00

If I ever start thinking about selling our house and moving out of our neighborhood, I need to make myself a rule: wait until after Halloween before making a decision. Because absolutely nothing gives me a warm fuzzy like seeing how our neighborhood does Halloween.

On Sunday, I managed to convince Clementine that she didn't really want to be Belle for Halloween. What she REALLY wanted to be was a firefighter (read between the lines: we had an old firefighter costume of Gabriel's and it was WAY warmer than the Belle costume she'd picked out). It's scary how long I've been blogging: here's the post from when the costume originally debuted.

But in typical girly-girl fashion, you can see a bit of princess tulle poking out from underneath her jacket. Women these days, juggling so many competing identities, ya know? Wife, mother, firefighter, princess. Luckily, underneath the Ironman costume's giant muscles, we were able to stuff plenty o' layers.

It wasn't miserably cold but it did start to rain almost as soon as we began trick-or-treating. Bummer.

The kiddos put up with the rain for longer than I would have but eventually we retreated to our front porch to concentrate on candy distribution and red wine intake.

Hope everyone had a fabulous Halloween!

Clementine's Naming Ceremony

2011-10-31T21:05:00.000-04:00

I'll have to do a Halloween post now that Trick-or-Treating has did done gone but before I tackle that I've got to knock the naming ceremony synopsis out...

Last weekend was all about Miss Clementine. She's been home from Ethiopia for a year and a half (how is that possible?) but I was little slow on getting around to arranging her naming ceremony. For our kids, since they're not Jewish by birth, a bris (or a naming ceremony for girls) plus a little dip in the mikvah, officially welcomes them into the Jewish faith.

Clementine's shindig was MUCH easier to arrange than Gabriel's since there was no outpatient surgery to coordinate. The rabbi met Kevin, Mom and me at the mikvah on Sunday morning for some prayers and a little dunk...

And then after we'd dried off, it was time to party.

Proof that we need to renovate/expand the kitchen. Everyone hanging out in the hallway JUST OUTSIDE the galley kitchen:-) What is it about parties and kitchens?

The rabbi led some lovely prayers in our living room, officially bestowing Clementine with the Hebrew name Sara--after my mother.

I forgot to warn the grands and great-grands that they had a reading assignment. Considering, they recovered nicely.

My aunt Cissy read a blessing on behalf of my Dad, which was perfect.

It's such a funny thing doing a ceremony like this with a child old enough to possibly even remember it. Clementine kept calling it her birthday party. We'd correct her and she'd say, "Oh! I forgot! It's my CEREMONY!" Very cute.

I tried not to overdo everything. That being said, I totally overdid everything. I bought so much deli meat and we had so many fixings that we ate sandwiches ALL of last week, just trying to keep the food from going to waste.

The biggest splurge was this cake. Pearl's Cupcakes made it for us using this source photo as inspiration.

It was to die for, and too beautiful for words. Red velvet on the top and plain jane for the bottom layer. All with some delicious buttercream icing. Yum, yum, and yum.

Lest you think the G-man was totally neglected, his much bigger and cooler cousin showed up so all was well with the universe. Especially since the button-down shirt we made him wear for the occasion practically matched the one Eli was sporting. Gabriel couldn't have been more pleased to hang in his shadow for the afternoon.

We instituted a strict no-gift policy (ya know, just to keep Clementine grounded), which everyone promptly ignored. She thought that was pretty cool.

Instead we asked people to consider a donation to the Tesfa Foundation, which supports a number of schools in rural Ethiopia. We thought those gifts were pretty cool, too.

At the end of the day, we were just tremendously grateful that so many people came to witness Clementine step into a new name.

She's got more names than most little girls her age but we think she wears each and every one pretty darned well.

Steve Urkel wants his outfit back

2011-10-29T14:49:00.000-04:00

Gabriel dressed himself for school the other day.

And Kevin and I decided it's a very good thing that his school has a zero-tolerance, anti-bullying policy on the books. That'd be a sweater vest, pulled over a soccer jersey, tucked into a pair of high-waisted shorts, WITH his socks pulled up to his knees. Thank you very much.

A good day

2011-10-29T14:39:00.000-04:00

A day that starts out with one of these boxes cannot possibly end badly.

Naming ceremony photos comin' at ya sometime soon.

Insanity

2011-10-24T21:40:00.001-04:00

The last few weeks have been absurd. Truly absurd. A few months ago, when I picked a date for Clementine's naming ceremony, I had no way to know I'd be starting a new job the following Monday. But that's how things work out:-) So, I went to a conference last weekend, I flew home on Tuesday night, on Wednesday our family started coming into town, on Friday I closed the door to my old office for the last time, and on Sunday 40 or so of our nearest and dearest showed up to welcome Clementine into the Jewish faith. I'm gonna have some fabulous photos to share soon but there are some technical challenges that have gotta be overcome first. Oh, and I have to sleep:-)

I was driving Clementine to daycare today on my way to the new job, completely lost in my own head, running through everything we'd jammed into the past couple of days.

From the backseat, I heard Miss C singing the refrain to this song on repeat, "Don't hate me cause I'm beautiful, don't hate me cause I'm beautiful!" (Google Keri Hilson's Pretty Girl Rock if you're not up on your Top 40:-) It might be time to remind our chica that despite having an all-about-her weekend, it's time to come back down to earth... but that can wait. On this particular Monday morning, she sang and I joined in.

UPPY!!!

2011-10-12T07:52:00.000-04:00

We're trying to break Clementine of the habit where she screams "UPPY!!!" anytime she wants us to pick her up.

Uppy is her adaptation of the word "Up." The frequent "uppy" refrains are starting to sound a little demanding, and since she's three and a half years old, I'm beginning to feel like there should be a "please" or something in there somewhere.

We've tried to make a concerted effort to ask her to rephrase the request. "How do you ask nicely, Clementine?" we ask before we scoop her up.

We're looking for "Can you please pick me up?" or something along those lines.

What we get is, "Can I PLEASE have some UPPY?!?!"

Two cool things about our synagogue

2011-10-10T20:41:00.000-04:00

We've belonged to our synagogue since we moved here four and a half years ago but we've gotten more involved as the kids have begun participating in Sunday school and whatnot.

Two things that make our synagogue awesome:

1) Steven Spielberg went to Yom Kippur services there this past Saturday (he's in town with Daniel Day Lewis and their posse filming Lincoln). Unfortunately, he went to the regular ol' adult service and we went to the kid-friendly service two hours earlier. Dang these kids of ours!!!!

Though we can't really complain about missing him when...

2) The synagogue does things like this during the children's service:

That'd be unrolling a torah and letting a bajillion little children put their grubby hands all over it:-)

The entire thing practically feels like an act of God... this many kids in a room with a scroll and not so much as a paper cut or a rip!

The rabbi says the trick is just getting the parents to relax:-)

Lest you think I didn't photograph my dear boy, I should admit Gabriel opted out of torah-handling this year. He wanted nothing to do with the high stakes:-) Good that he knows his limits!

BTW, sort of in love with the Instagram app. Don't know why it took me so long to find it.

G takes the plunge

2011-10-09T07:24:00.000-04:00

We have a boy scout in our midst.

And, yes, he is pairing his spankin' new uniform with a pair of purple soccer socks and a pair of Spiderman sandals ON PURPOSE. Because he's a snappy dresser, that's why:-)

He is all kinds of excited about the belt and hat and neckerchief.

He keeps calling the whole ensemble his "camping outfit."

Love it.

How not to blog

2011-10-07T06:23:00.000-04:00

Just checked out this here blog's analytics for the first time in several months. As it turns out, there's a direct correlation between how much you blog and how many people visit your site. Who'd have thunk it?

The green line is this time last year. Oopsies:-)

Comin' at ya from 6:15 a.m.

2011-10-07T06:15:00.000-04:00

I'm up early to write but, alas, I'm suffering a little writer's block this morning. So instead of writing, I'm sorting through cute pics of the kids I never got around to posting.

Cheeky.

Another loss

2011-10-05T22:03:00.000-04:00

I posted this same message on Facebook but I thought I'd share it here as well:

If you'd like to honor Steve Jobs' memory, consider making a gift to the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network. Let's stop losing great human beings before their time. http://pancan.org/section_donate/ Even if you can't give, consider re-posting this link.

You guys know that the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network is a cause that's near and dear to my heart. Steve Jobs was two years younger than my dad was when he died. We have to do more to fund research if we're going to make progress fighting this horrible disease. The only way we're going to beat pancreatic cancer is if we do more. Please give. We have to do more.

Rosh Hashanah

2011-09-29T15:07:00.000-04:00

We kept the kids home today for Rosh Hashanah.

Kevin snapped this pic of the three of us spiffed up and ready for the children's service.

Gabriel is wearing a button-down shirt, so you pretty much know he's going somewhere epic:-) No explanation for the grocery store sticker he's pairing with his duds. Happy New Year!

Friday Night Lights

2011-09-26T21:16:00.000-04:00

This fall, Friday evenings are soccer evenings.

Which means that they're also wait-patiently-on-the-sidelines evenings:-)

A "gallery wall"

2011-09-25T21:14:00.001-04:00

There's a lot of blog talk and pinning happening with regard to "gallery walls."

When I was growing up, long before Pinterest, my mom's walls were always hung floor to ceiling with pictures. My whole life, I haven't called it a gallery wall. I've just called it good decorating, according to every woman in my entire family:-)

See, here's my mom's "gallery wall" circa 1985. A woman ahead of her time!

You can take a peak at a wall of my grandmother's behind the heads of all of us kids (we're wishing her a happy 70th birthday).

Anyway, I come by this whole gallery wall thing naturally:-)

Since we moved every couple of years growing up, I can remember helping my parents arrange the pictures on the carpets before my dad began marking the nail holes. He was meticulous about it. Measuring everything to a T. And my mom would straighten and re-straighten, making sure everything was level.

Fast forward. Now that I've got a desk I love in the living room, it provides a great anchor for ~~a gallery wall~~ one of Mom's wall o' pictures above it.

I've been growing my wall slowly. The big black and white print is something I made in high school. I bought the old letterpress drawer when I was junking with my sister in Roanoke. The LOVE cross stitch is something my aunt made us for our wedding. She mimicked the LOVE stamp that was on our wedding invitation. It's incredible. The kingfisher is a Sheep Jones I blogged about this past winter. I was given the crayons when I was born. The red print next to the crayons is actually a poster from work that was misprinted--we chopped off the words and I stuck it in a frame I had around the house.

There have been a few recent additions.

I finally framed the peacocks print by Geninne Zlatkis. I'm really happy with the way it turned out. I love every last one of her birds.

I ordered this Leah Giberson chairs print on Etsy. Her stuff is so cool (IMHO).

This weekend, I was doing a little junking and found not one but two treasures. This Georges Briard enamel plate:

I love the line drawing.

And then I grabbed this random pig's head as soon as I saw it.

It's kitsch but I think that's sort of fun. And I like that it adds a little dimension to the grouping. He jumped out at me when I saw him because of this blog post. What did we do before the Internet? Perhaps we didn't buy random ceramic pig heads???

Anyway, I've been having a lot of fun with the wall. I'm still looking for a few small things to finish it off but I feel like I can take my time. I think that's part of the fun of it.

Choir kids

2011-09-25T20:21:00.000-04:00

I've told a few people this story already but it's worth repeating on the blog. Clementine is officially the youngest member of our synagogue's children's choir. By a good bit.

This is new. It all started on the morning of the kids' first day back at Sunday school. I asked Gabriel if he wanted to check out the children's choir (open to K and up). They practice directly after Sunday school gets out and I figured we could sit in and he could get a feel for it before committing. He told me, emphatically, no. I wasn't surprised but I thought I'd push a little. Everything we do can't be sports, right? Plus, he's not biologically related to me, so he has a chance of actually being good at singing (Dad was fond of saying I couldn't carry a tune in a bucket... which is a 100% true statement).

Anyway, I drag Gabriel to choir. The cantor is herding kids into pews and handing out choir books. "Look," I tell Gabriel, "You get a choir book if you join the choir. You wanna join?" Another vehement head shake. The cantor tries to get him on board, "Oh, Gabriel, you don't want to join the choir?" Nope.

A hand shoots straight up in the air. It belongs to my daughter. "I want to join choir!!!!"

I give her a look. "Sweetie, you're a little too young to join choir, I think." Ummm, 'cause she's three.

The cantor jumps in, "She can join the choir if she wants. Who cares if she can't read a choir book or sing the words. She'll look cute up there."

Turns out, she's right. She does look cute up there.

And the best part is, with his sister in the choir, the G-man doesn't think it's so bad after all.

A collector's paradise

2011-09-24T07:32:00.000-04:00

I've been going through London photos, organizing them so I can knock out another Shutterfly photo book (I've got Santorini, Paros, and Istanbul behind me... Italy, London and Greece's mainland are still to go). Anyway, I came across this photo I took of a store on Portobello Road. I can't remember the name of the store. To my recollection, the store sold jeans and stuff. Kind of like a British Urban Outfitters. Anyone else know it?

Anyway, I'm not a huge collector of anything but this has gotta be one of the coolest ways I've ever seen a collection displayed.

It makes me want to go out and buy a thousand old sewing machines. Or a thousand somethings...

My kids' perceptions about Ethiopia

2011-09-23T20:23:00.000-04:00

The kids and I were in bed reading a few minutes ago. We were reading this book, which both kids adore. The reason that they adore it is because it highlights both Guatemala AND Ethiopia in a single book. When we get to those pictures, I have to read the countries' names very sloooowwwwly and awfully LOUD.

Anyway, there's a picture of a kid playing ball in Mexico, and Gabriel told me it reminded him of Guatemala. I asked if he remembered our trip to Guatemala, and he said he did. Clementine, of course, wanted to immediately begin a conversation about traveling to Ethiopia. So we talked about that next. I told her we'd go when she's a little older. She seemed satisfied except Gabriel butted in to inform us that he doesn't want to go to Ethiopia. Ever.

I asked him why not.

"They have too many babies," he said, glaring at his sister just a smidge.

Ouch. Ethiopia, land of annoying little sisters. Perception and reality. Funny things when you're six. Whenever we do manage to get there again, I'm thinking he may face a bit of a learning curve:-)

Of course, Clementine's response to him was, "Nuh Uh! Ethiopia has BIG GIRLS like me!" so it's not like she's gonna be far behind him.

My happy place

2011-09-22T20:52:00.000-04:00

For the last month or so, I've been waking up at 5 a.m. to write. The house is quiet and I sit at this desk with a cup of coffee and my thoughts.

It was tough to figure out how to plug back in this summer. To keep writing. In Greece, the words poured out of me. But even with just a month of dark mornings, I'm starting to visualize how this thing might come together. When I'm done, there may not be much worth reading but I'll have achieved a huge personal goal of mine. I'll have written down some of my most important memories of Dad. Some of the things I don't want to forget as the years roll by and as my kids grow older.

No fun

2011-09-17T17:31:00.000-04:00

I have finally given up complete control in the Halloween costume department. I tried to nudge Clementine a little this year, and I got nowhere. I nearly cried at checkout.

Where did my tiny children go? The ones I could dress up in insanely adorable costumes of my choosing?!?!

What Gabriel and I did last Friday

2011-09-15T21:28:00.000-04:00

I felt mildly guilty letting Gabriel play hooky on his fourth day of first grade. His teacher gave me her blessing but still...

Then I figured, how many times do you get the chance to go on a date with your mom to hear the President of the United States speak in your hometown?

Gabriel stayed occupied during the wait to get through security...

And even made some friends along the way.

Freakin' cute.

And if I had any guilt at all, it evaporated once we hit the main attraction.

President Obama gave his jobs talk. Regardless of whether you're for or against the bill, his speech was first grade social studies on steroids, and made me feel completely justified keeping Gabriel out of school:-)

First Day of School

2011-09-15T21:02:00.000-04:00

I'm a week and a half late on the back to school porch photos.

Gabriel started first grade last Tuesday, and so far we're all loving life! He's in a Spanish immersion program that we're super-excited about for our Guatemalan bambino.

I didn't go nuts on back to school shopping this year. We're practically in a recession, people:-) In a few weeks when it gets cooler, I'm gonna have to hit the stores and buy some more pairs of pants for him but, for now, it's still shorts weather, his shoes fit, and he thinks he looks swell. My motto is, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

I did enforce a button-down shirt on the first day. With that behind us, we're back to Spider-Man and Star Wars T-shirts... business as usual.

Clementine is ITCHING to get herself over to the elementary school with him:-) For the last few weeks, she's been telling everyone she's five. If she says it enough times, I think she thinks she'll magically transport herself to kindergarten...

Judging by how quickly the past year's flown by...

... she will be there before too long!

Snaggle-mouth

2011-09-01T22:08:00.000-04:00

This kiddo had his second visit from the Tooth Fairy last night...

And it's all because his mamma asked if she could give his bottom tooth a wee wiggle. My dad would have been so proud... he was always threatening to tie one end of a piece of dental floss to my tooth and the other to a door knob:-) Lucky for the G-man, I barely touched the tooth and it popped out onto his tongue. He and I were both jumping up and down in the bathroom, all kinds of excited that it was out!

He's looking like a real snaggle-mouth these days. We're just waiting on the dead tooth to come out (which the dentist tells us may take longer than the others) and G will have finally finished losing the front four... a project he kicked off at just 18 months old! Such an over-achiever!!!

A Tale of Two Clementines

2011-08-28T21:22:00.000-04:00

While everyone in the neighborhood was out surveying the storm's damage today, I spent some time chatting with a family we'd previously met through Clementine's daycare but don't know very well. A massive tree had fallen outside their home and everyone was congregating around it, talking about the tree and also about other stuff like the beginning of school and teacher assignments and the like.

Anyway, the mother told us a story that I've got to write down before I forget it.

It turns out, there's another Clementine in the neighborhood. She's a tow-headed blonde who was born around the time our Clementine came home from Ethiopia. We know about her because at some point last year, we were on a playground and I called Clementine's name, and a little girl came running up to me, tugged on my shirt, and said, "I've got a baby sister named Clementine!" So, okay... that's how I know there are two:-)

Anyway, so the kids in this family we're chatting with know both Clementines... Ethiopian, run-the-show Clementine and blonde, bambina Clementine. The mother tells me that, over breakfast one day, she hears her kids discussing this fact--that they know TWO Clementines. What are the chances, right?

She listens to them analyzing this strange coincidence, and at one point, she overhears one child tell the other that he knows how to tell the two Clementines apart. Assuming she knows where this is going, she asks him to elaborate... thinking she's got a teaching moment on her hands. He tells her, "Oh, it's really easy. They wear different clothes."

The morning after the storm

2011-08-28T21:05:00.000-04:00

The kids and I ventured out early this morning to inspect Irene's damage to the neighborhood. I think the fact that our neighborhood's over 100 years old (and has undoubtedly seen worse) coupled with the fact that city dwelling means we've got far fewer trees to contend with, ultimately left us fairly well off with respect to property damage.

Mainly, we just have a big mess on our hands.

Even the trees that did fall were polite about it.

This pic below looks worse than it is. There's damage to the porch but the elderly woman we spoke with, who owns the place, said it didn't even break the glass windows of her upstairs master bedroom. She said that what she's most upset about is losing the tree. She planted it 75 years ago, when she was a young girl.

Yes, you read that right. Her grandparents lived in the house, her parents lived in the house, and now she lives in the house. Her family has owned the house for 100 years. Tree or no tree, you don't see that much these days.

My mother is contending with all kinds of fallen giants in southern Maryland, and she still hasn't had her power restored. Multiple neighbors on her street had trees fall on their homes last night. Mom had a tree fall on her home three nights ago, when a tornado came through, which only made riding out the storm last night--with a tarped roof--more nerve-wrecking. By comparison, we're very, very lucky.

Thank you IKEA

2011-08-27T10:30:00.001-04:00

Thank you IKEA. This never happens.

Never, ever, ever do I open up a catalog or magazine and find a photograph of a family that looks like ours. Until today.

It's subtle and I love it.

Thank you.

Hurricane Preparations

2011-08-27T10:24:00.000-04:00

At our house, we're preparing for Hurricane Irene by getting in as much screen time as humanly possible:-)

The theory is that the screen time will sustain us through the power outages that are sure to come:-) Plus, everyone woke up reeeaaaallllyyy early.

I can't explain Gabriel playing the Wii in his underwear. It's comfy? I've got nothing...

Imaginative Play

2011-08-19T21:12:00.000-04:00

I won't say it's never happened. But when I looked up this evening and realized that Clementine had compiled a small toy department on the carpet in the hallway, the scene definitely called for pulling out the camera.

She's been home for nearly 18 months. And, typically, she just doesn't play. Not like this.

I grabbed the hubs, "Kevin, check this out. She's PLAYING. Like with toys"

We both just stood and stared. It's not that she's not having FUN 24/7. She loves life. She's her brother's shadow. She cuddles. She draws. She loves to be read to. She runs the show at daycare. But toys are a different story. True imaginative play is a challenge. When Clementine came home at nearly two years old, she just didn't have any experience with toys. Sometimes she'll act interested in a doll or something for a little while but it's more about pushing the doll carriage around or interacting with Gabriel or modeling whatever I'm doing. She doesn't typically entertain herself with toys. So when I see this kind of play happening in my hallway, I just love it.

5 for 5

2011-08-18T22:07:00.000-04:00

Please watch this video. It's by an adoptive mother of an Ethiopian child who couldn't sit by and do nothing as she watched thousands of children in East Africa die of famine and drought.

She's launched a "5 for 5" campaign. Give $5 (or more if you can) and ask 5 friends to do the same. She's organized the campaign through World Vision's See Your Impact website. If you're not into World Vision, go find another organization that can get your money to the people who need it most.

It's really hard for me to comprehend the disparity. The difference between Clementine's life today and those of children just like her... children who, quite simply, won't live to see their lives unfold without help from people who can give.

This is your life

2011-08-18T21:42:00.000-04:00

When Dad died I made what turned into a 17-minute-long slideshow of family photos, set to music. It played in the funeral home's lobby during his memorial service and it's been replayed in our DVD player many times since. The slideshow-turned-DVD is one of Gabriel's favorite "movies," and while he doesn't request it all the time and I never prod, he does ask to watch it at least once every couple of months. When we play it, we all sit and watch it once through. Then Gabriel and I usually watch it a few more times while Kevin and Clementine (who have shorter attention spans;-) get on with their evening. On the evenings when we play the DVD, Gabriel would sit in front of the T.V. and watch it all night long if I let him. He's mesmerized by all the photos of Granddad.

We haven't watched the slideshow in a month or two. The other night, out of the blue, Gabriel told me that he wished he was dead. I was speechless. I asked why in the world he'd ever wish something so dreadful. And he told me that he wished he would die because then, he hoped, I would make a slideshow about him. The statement and its sentiment took my breath away. Days later, I still get a sick feeling in my stomach thinking about it. God, the world is so black and white when you're young. I reassured him that I would make him a slideshow full of pictures of him JUST BECAUSE. That he doesn't have to be gone for us to do that. That we can even do it TOGETHER. And that if he were gone, I would never stop crying, so he's not allowed to go anywhere. He seemed happy with the overall outcome... pleased that I presented an alternate way to land a this-is-your-life-esque glimpse of himself. But Jeez, talk about heavy. Someone, somewhere told me once that parenting small kids is easy. For the most part, they've got small problems. Big kids have big problems. I'm highly suspicious that this is only the first of many pit-in-my-stomach conversations with my thoughtful boy.

Martial Arts Master

2011-08-09T07:23:00.000-04:00

Gabriel's in a karate camp all this week. He is beyond excited about the uniform.

As far as I can gather, based on the very limited information my little one chooses to provide me from the backseat of our car and across the dinner table, it sounds like they learned to bow yesterday. Kevin and I told Gabriel that there's an old movie we grew up watching that's got his name all over it. Some of you may have heard of it? It's called Karate Kid:-)

The baker

2011-08-08T21:14:00.000-04:00

I came rushing home from work today to pop a boxed cake mix in the oven for Kevin's b-day (it is what it is!). And this was sitting on the counter.

The Duncan Hines box he taped his note to was empty... devoid of cake mix. And this, my friends, is why I married my now-31 year old husband when he was a bright and shiny 22 years old. Because I could see all that beautiful potential:-) The man had a pretty light schedule today, so he figured he'd beat me to baking his birthday cake. I love him.

Getting out of town

2011-08-08T21:02:00.000-04:00

For Kevin's birthday, I gave him the gift of 24 hours. Without me and the kids. And, more importantly, with his friends. I also gave him a real present but my guess is I got more points for the prior:-)

When I proposed the weekend to some of Kevin's college friends, I promised that if they invaded the house for the weekend, the kids and I would skedaddle. I'd originally intended for the deal to be a surprise but Kevin figured me out. Regardless, by the time they knocked on our door Saturday morning, I'd made good on my word and we were nearly in Roanoke.

Being homeless for 24 hours gave us the perfect opportunity to see my sister Ruthie and test out the guest bedroom in her spankin' new digs.

Uncle Kevin took the kids to the movies, and Ru-Ru and I went out to lunch at this cute little place called Fork in the Alley. Then we did a little junking at a fun place they've got in town called Black Dog Salvage. Ru and Kevin cooked hamburgers and hotdogs and corn on the cob for dinner, and Ruthie and I arranged and rearranged imaginary furniture in her empty rooms.

Growing up with family scattered across the country (and often the world), I'm incredibly grateful that some of my siblings live as close as they do.

Let's pretend

2011-08-04T20:36:00.001-04:00

Overheard this evening while I was cooking dinner:

G: Let's pretend you liked me a lot and then I died.
C: I like you a lot.
G: Okay then. (falls on floor)

This makes me want to cry for any number of reasons.

A new lease on life

2011-08-03T20:48:00.000-04:00

A year ago or so, my mother sent us home with the old easel we used when we were kids. I was a little intimidated to set it up. I mean, there's no telling what can happen when you let these kids loose with paint. In. Our. Home.

I finally bit the bullet and set everything up this evening, squirting paint into a bunch of the tip proof containers and arming the kiddies with paper and brushes. I wanted to raid Kevin's side of the closet, looking for big shirts to use as smocks, but he wasn't home yet (and the kids were going out of their skin with excitement) so we improvised and the kids just got naked.

They both love having the easel in the dining room--Gabriel especially. He told me he wants to be a superhero artist when he gets older. I thought he meant that he wants to be a superhero who moonlights as an artist but he clarified. He wants to be an artist who paints superheroes. Nice.

His work has a very modernist vibe. The sky is clearly the limit:-)

Thank you Breyers

2011-08-03T20:33:00.000-04:00

Dear Breyers,

Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for making a lactose-free ice cream.

The dairy free So Delicious (which, BTW, is not so delicious) is melting in the bottom of our trash can as I type. Clementine has been liberated and we're all thrilled!

Things Organized Neatly

2011-08-01T19:56:00.001-04:00

A behind-the-scenes peak at putting together a "Things Organized Neatly" submission.

I'll admit it. I had help.

I think that, without all the extra three-year-old assistance, we might have been just a little bit neater.

The blog post that took six months to write

2011-08-01T19:32:00.000-04:00

I have a dear friend who also happens to be a devoted blog reader. And when she visited the kids and me waaaaaaayyyyyyy back in February, she naturally assumed she'd make it onto the blog. As well she should! And then... I got busy. There was the packing. And the traveling. And the living abroad. And the returning from abroad. And the going back to work. And the weddings. And the summer. And this little blog entry just didn't make it online. Which is not at all fair. Because this girl is fabulous and deserves 10 entries. 100 entries. 1000 entries.

Without further ado, I give you... (cue time warp music) Giavanna in my hallway with my children in February.

My secret hope is that Giavanna meets some wildly successful, charming, handsome Richmonder so she will ditch NYC and all its trappings and move back to RVA where she will lunch with me. Regularly. So if you know any wildly successful, charming, handsome Richmonders, you may leave a comment at the bottom of this post. If you know wildly successful, charming, handsome anywhere-else-ers, I don't wanna know:-)

It appears that way back in February, both my children had colds. And they were tiny. How'd they grow so much in six months? Lord, how did it take me six months to get this online? This post is brought to you by the letter G, which stands for Giavanna, and the letter P, which stands for more than a little bit of prodding by the aforementioned! If you too are waiting for me to blog about a time you sat in my living room or I sat in yours, I'm warning you that you may be in for a loooonnng wait! And now that it's been six months, Giavanna--come back! I PROMISE I'll do a much more thorough job documenting the fun we get into if you do.

Missing my Muses

2011-07-31T21:59:00.001-04:00

One of the reasons that, as of late, all has been quiet on the blogging front is that I've been missing my two muses.

See those backpacks they're sporting? They're packed with toys and other vitally important belongings for a very big trip to Gramma and Bubba's house. Yeah, G and C have been gone 9 days.

I took this little thing called a three-month trip to Greece, so I'm pretty much never gonna see another day of vacation in my lifetime but the same doesn't hold true for the rest of the fam. Kevin was off work and figured that he'd leave me to my own devices and take the kids down to Florida to visit with his family.

I haven't been handling the whole thing all that well. I mean, yes, the house stays put away. And I don't have to cook (not that I do a ton of that anyway). And in theory, I could be doing any number of adult things in their absence. But I dunno... it's just soooo quiet. And I miss 'em. And I've been feeling a little bit sorry for myself what with the whole working 8:30 to 5:00 while the kids and Kevin are chillaxin' at the pool, going to Disney World, and just generally having the time of their lives without me. Yesterday Kevin called me to tell me that Gabriel rode Space Mountain. AND liked it. Space freakin' Mountain. Unbelievable. I can't believe it. It blows my mind that he'll ride a roller coaster yet he doesn't like to go to the bathroom on his own because it might be scary without someone else to keep him company. What a funny kid. Kevin said Clementine went out of her skin meeting Pooh and the rest of Christopher Robin's gang, which is funny because to my knowledge she's never seen a single Winnie the Pooh cartoon, and I'm pretty sure we haven't gotten around to reading any A. A. Milne to her either. Anyway, point is... I'm missing stuff and it's sort of sucky and I'm being a big baby about it.

Everyone's home tomorrow and our regular lives will resume, which maybe (just maybe) will mean that I'll start contributing to this blog a tad more regularly.

Alison Krauss and Union Station

2011-07-31T21:37:00.000-04:00

We women got out of town this weekend and had ourselves a little date with Alison Krauss and Union Station. Sigh. All agreed it was the best concert ever.

Even if we did have to drag around Ru-Ru and her bum leg:-)

I've been so bad about blogging that I'm not even sure I alerted the World Wide Web that Ruthie broke her ankle. She and her hubster closed on their new house and she took a bad fall in their backyard the very next day. Best excuse ever if you're looking to get out of unpacking boxes... She's got a very fashionable trash bag around her cast in the pic above because there was a brief summer drizzle while we were waiting for the show to start, and we didn't want to take any chances. To make her feel better about her fashion faux pas, we plied her with beer:-)

The majority of my concert photos look like this:

So there's not much point in showing you those. I will show you the one decent photo we grabbed this morning after brunch at The Nook.

Ruthie's Kevin claims that if everyone says, "Who me?" before posing for a photo, you're guaranteed to get a natural smile. I'm not 100 percent convinced but we gave it a shot:-)

Afterwards, we all drove off in separate directions. So fun to live close enough that we can make weekends like this one happen.

P.S. Wish Ruthie luck... she finds out on Wednesday if she gets to transition from a cast to a walking boot!

Did you know?

2011-07-31T21:24:00.000-04:00

For all you out-of-towners, this is a 100% true statement:-)

Nostalgic for the Open Road

2011-07-18T22:18:00.000-04:00

They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace -
Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
Alice is marrying one of the guard.
"A soldier's life is terrible hard,"
Says Alice.

They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace -
Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
We saw a guard in a sentry-box.
"One of the sergeants looks after their socks,"
Says Alice.

They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace -
Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
We looked for the King, but he never came.
"Well, God take care of him, all the same,"
Says Alice.

They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace -
Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
They've great big parties inside the grounds.
"I wouldn't be King for a hundred pounds,"
Says Alice.

They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace -
Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
A face looked out, but it wasn't the King's.
"He's much too busy a-signing things,"
Says Alice.

They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace -
Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
"Do you think the King knows all about me?"
"Sure to, dear, but it's time for tea,"
Says Alice.

-- A. A. Milne

Cuz

2011-07-12T20:39:00.000-04:00

One of the cool things about the wedding weekend in Orlando is that the three cousins got to hang out together for only the second time EVER.

Amelia moved to Hawai'i a month or so after we arrived home with Clementine. Kevin, the kids and I made one quick trip up to Mount Vernon last April to get the two fams together before they headed off to paradise. We nabbed a few good photos of the three of them to send along to Gramma and Bubba.

Photos are nice but the reality is that Beverly and Tom had never seen their three grandkids all together in person.

Voila.

The weekend was chaotic but I did drag the three kids out for a brief photo session on the porch swing that's been rockin' grandkids' bottoms while our parental camera flashes go into overdrive since 2005:

Time flies.

It was fun to see the kids interact. Three is a gang.

Both G and C thought Amelia was their own personal plaything.

She sort of was (though, really, I think Clementine's gotta couple of years before she's gonna beat the allure of running around after a high energy boy).

In the end, I hope all three grow to be good friends.

Petite Pedicures

2011-07-12T20:15:00.000-04:00

On Friday morning, before we all headed down to the resort for the rehearsal, I found myself with a little time to kill and some slightly tarnished toenails. I thought to myself, "Self, this will not do."

While I was looking around for my purse and my mother-in-law's car keys, I spotted two very silly little girls who looked as if they might be in need of their very first proper pedicures.

Okay, need is a strong word. But it was a wedding weekend and I thought, what the heck... let's live a little:-)

Clementine's toes barely touched the tub o' jets. Didn't matter. The girls knew this was something special.

For the two littles, the final product was heavy on the glitter.

Couldn't we all use a little more glitter in our lives?

Wedding Weekend Highlights

2011-07-10T21:55:00.001-04:00

As it turns out, this guy is one of my most devoted blog readers.

He also happens to be Kevin's grandfather. And he's been noticing that my posts have been coming few and far between lately. So I promised him some new material. Luckily, Stephanie's wedding weekend provided plenty of fodder, so I should stay busy for a while...

So Kevin's baby sister got married this weekend. In what's gotta be one of the prettiest ceremonies/receptions ever. My mother-in-law, or "MOB" as she prefers to be called now (Mother of the Bride), left nothing to chance and the result was just beautiful. Beautiful place. Beautiful people. Beautiful vibe.

And did I mention beautiful children?

Gabriel, Amelia, and Clementine would have stolen the show were it not for such a stunning bride;-) Together, the four of them did okay for themselves. Clementine liked being right in the thick of things with the bridesmaids.

And Gramma coached Gabriel on this fairly adorable royal wave that he'd pretty much perfected by the time he sauntered down the aisle.

A few highly memorable moments for you... Clementine fell asleep getting her hair done and I had to hold her head steady throughout the entire styling session, while she snoozed with her chin in the palm of my hand.

When she woke up and realized the whole thing had happened without her, the only thing that would console her was makeup.

And then during the reception, Stephanie and her dad had just started their father/daughter dance, and I was already weeping, looking for an escape hatch because father/daughter dances are fairly hard for me to handle. All of a sudden, the music changed and the two of them broke into this completely choreographed dance to a medley of tunes, including Thriller:-)

Never in 100,000 years did I think I'd see my father-in-law participate in a choreographed Michael Jackson dance. Make it a million years. But he did it. And he did it with style.

According to Bev, the two of them practiced for hours and hours. And then kept the whole thing a complete secret. We were totally floored. In Tom's speech, he justified it with something along the lines of, "A father's love knows no bounds." I'll say:-) Really hoping a video of the performance surfaces on YouTube before too long!

The kids loved all the dancing as well. Gabriel taught Amelia and Clementine how to "breakdance." Something was lost in translation:-)

I've got many, many more photos to share, and I'll try to come up with more reasons to share them over the next few days. In the meanwhile, Beverly and Tom should be patting themselves on the back. They got the last one married off... to steal an expression of my dad's, they done good.

Tutu

2011-07-02T13:54:00.000-04:00

Kasane,

This girl is a tutu-lovin' fool. Thanks:-)

Just swingin'

2011-07-02T13:51:00.000-04:00

We kicked off the Fourth of July weekend with Cuban food and an evening at the playground.

It'd been hot during the day but, for whatever reason, the weather turned surprisingly pleasant. A little bit of a breeze and no bugs.

Perfect for swinging. Clementine bowled us over... she's learned to swing by herself. She hasn't exactly figure out pumping her legs but she's got the shifting-your-weight part, which seems to be good enough to keep her going.

Gabriel's Portrait Revealed

2011-06-30T21:22:00.001-04:00

It's a little sad because the G-man's portrait has been hanging over our fireplace ever since it arrived on our doorstep a few days after we arrived home from London, and I'm just now getting around to blogging about it.

For those of you who remember, back this spring I commissioned the fabulously talented Clare Elsaesser to capture G. If you happened upon her blog and have been keeping up with her comings and goings, then you've already caught glimpse of the painting because she blogged about it several days ago. It's really every bit as fabulously wonderful as it looked over on Tastes Orangey.

Without further ado, I give you G.

I've been dying to have something to fill the void over our fireplace for four years now. But I could never have imagined having something this lovely to look at, day in and day out. Every time I walk into the room, I'm reminded of how much I suddenly like this room. Clare did a wonderful job capturing Gabriel and Guatemala and she was so great about taking into account the room it'd be hanging in and our entire vibe. We exchanged a bunch of e-mails back and forth, and in the end, it just makes all of it so worth it. We will love the painting as long as we live.

There'll be a Clementine commission coming Clare's way before she knows it:-)

Gabriel's first meet of the season

2011-06-30T20:59:00.000-04:00

This is a girl who really thinks she should be on a swim team.

And this is a boy who has three years on her and is just fine with that.

Gabriel had his first swim meet of the season the other night and he did great. He'd probably go a little bit faster if he didn't stop to smile every time he took a breath!

I'm okay with smiles.

Hydrangeas

2011-06-30T20:49:00.000-04:00

As a belated anniversary gift of sorts, Kevin planted my hydrangeas this evening. I picked out three plants for the front yard the other day.

I'm really hoping the soil makes them bloom blue. We had pink hydrangeas in between the layers of our wedding cake, so I'll make my peace with pink:-)

Gotta love city gardening. There's not much of it.

I made us both gin and tonics and sat on the front porch steps while he worked. Summertime was made for nights like this.

Lost Earring

2011-06-24T20:43:00.000-04:00

The other day I lost a small earring. I was sort of bummed since it was an earring I've had since I was a teenager. A few hours later I found it, quite by accident. It was nestled safely in my daughter's hair:-)

We bit the vehicular bullet

2011-06-22T21:00:00.000-04:00

Sooner or later, it had to happen. This evening I traded in my pride for a kid taxi, a people-mover, a whatever you want to call the thing parked in my driveway.

I'm not happy about it. But I'm gonna deal. It's got 12 cupholders. I could pretty much drink six cups of coffees at once.

It's a 2008 Dodge Grand Caravan. When we realized the white version was $1,000 less than the slightly more subtle navy blue version, I had to ask myself whether it mattered. So, the car is an exact replica of the car my mother couldn't wait to quit driving when we kids finally aged out of being chauffeured around. So, I'll look like a repairman tooling around town. White is not sexy. But then, I figure, pretty much nothing about this car is:-)

The kids are beyond stoked. While we were signing the papers at CarMax, we kept threatening that anyone with bad behavior wouldn't get to ride home in the new car. They bought it.

So we're a minivan family. It's come to this. It's economical. We won't have to draw straws to see who rides on the roof of the car when we go down to Florida for Christmas. It's got room for our family and the kids' friends. It's not fun but something tells me I'll be spending a heckuva lotta time in it over the next decade or so. Oy.

First Set of Sofa Pics

2011-06-20T22:06:00.000-04:00

Bella's thinking, "These kids are crazy."

I may have taken 133 photos in an attempt to get one good one of the three cousins, together for the first time. Bella kept distracting my two with her cuteness.

How is it that the four month old did the best of any of them? She kept the pose the entire time and was eyeballing the camera lens (or at least thereabouts) a good portion of the time!

Something tells these kids have a lot more sofa photo shoots in their future...

Big Weekend

2011-06-19T21:17:00.000-04:00

This weekend a lot of very BIG things happened.

Our niece, Elise, was born. She's all the way out in Hawaii, and we're not exactly sure when we'll get the chance to meet her face-to-face but she's here and she's healthy and beautiful!

Then we got to meet our other niece, my brother's daughter Bella, for the very first time ever. And I'm here to tell you, she lives up to her reputation.

She's breathtakingly beautiful. And oh so sweet. I'm not sure I heard her cry once. Okay, maybe once. That's it. Like, a single time all weekend. And that's just cause she was hungry. As my brother's fond of saying, "Camera lenses don't do her justice."

And then the third marvelous thing that happened this weekend was that my best friend in the whole world got married. To a really great guy.

My photos are all a little random since I was in the wedding and didn't catch as much as I would have liked. But here we are...

I thought this one was funny. She'd just arrived at the cocktail hour. One of her flower girls is under there.

With six nieces between them, they had a lotta flower girls, each cuter than the next.

I got through my speech, barely.

Selfishly, we love any party that puts all four of us sibs in a room together.

Not that any of us are urging Danny to make an honest woman of his delightful girlfriend (read: deep sarcasm) BUT... we were a bit bummed when he lost the garter toss to a seven year old:-)

Luckily, she appears to love him anyway.

The entire family's known Kasane since she was little, and mainly, we were just excited to see her so over-the-moon happy.

Kasane and Jimmy have been engaged since New Year's Eve of 2009/2010, so I can't believe that the wedding has come and gone! Now the fun part begins... spending the rest of their lives together.

No somebodies

2011-06-15T21:12:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, we were walking past the basketball court on the way into the pool. A few boys were shooting hoops. Clementine narrated as she walked, "Somebody is playing baseball." "No, Clementine," I said, "somebody is playing basketball." "Basketball?" she repeated. An hour later, on the way back to the car, the court was empty. "Look, Mom. No somebodies are playing basketball."

I'm still here

2011-06-13T22:02:00.001-04:00

Mom was in town this weekend, so we shopped, ate out, and shopped some more. I've got one last suitcase from Greece to unpack. It's a tiny one but it's got a rat's nest of USB cords and other electronics in it, and going through it will mean trying to remember which cord goes with which device. I'm waiting for a night when I feel particularly energetic:-)

Over the past week, we've just been enjoying rediscovering our routine. We've been spending some time at the pool and taking long walks in our neighborhood during the evenings.

Still feeling rather uninspired on the blogging front but I thought you guys would appreciate these photos from Harrods' food hall. While we were in London, we bought cupcakes at Harrods' and ate them in Hyde Park.

The cupcakes were fabulous but what I wanted to tell you all about is the confectionery we didn't buy:-) Yup, they're selling cake pops too!!! When will the cake pop madness cease?

I'll admit it... they're pretty. But do you see that thing in the corner of the photo? It's a real, honest-to-God cake:-)

To keep you satisfied

2011-06-09T21:53:00.000-04:00

While I sit around waiting to rediscover my this-side-of-the-Atlantic blogging mojo, I thought I'd share this pic.

No one can argue these kids don't get around:-)

There's no place like home

2011-06-06T21:49:00.000-04:00

We're home. And it feels really, really good to be here. After three fabulous days in London, we touched down on American soil on Saturday night. Everything worked according to plan... the taxi ride to the airport in Athens, the flight, storing the bags at Heathrow, taking the Tube into London, our hotel, dragging ourselves back out to Heathrow, recovering our baggage, the airport, the flight, the rental car, the drive to Mom's house to pick up our car, the final drive back to Richmond. It was a logistical nightmare but it couldn't have gone more perfectly, though we did have two very, very tired children when it was all said and done.

Gabriel fell asleep somewhere between arriving at Dulles and the rental car counter. Kevin propped him on a suitcase while we loaded the car. He didn't even wake up. That's tired.

London pics will follow just as soon as my internal clock adjusts and I manage to stay up past 9 p.m. My eyelids are closing on me as I type this!

Travel is grand but it's true what they say. There's no place like home.

Your votes for random things are required

2011-06-01T00:03:00.001-04:00

Somebody (thanks!) nominated this little blog for an award thingy. Circle of Moms is compiling a list of "Top 25 Adoption Blogs by Parents" and you can click on the button below and go vote for If It Takes a Whole Life. Here's another link. Nifty, huh?

Okay, while you're voting for silly things that don't matter much in the grand scheme of things, follow this link and go vote for Clementine. Her photo's in the running for some prize or another that might, at the end of the day, land her on the cover of Parents Magazine. It's a long shot and looking longer since she lopped a chunk of her hair off last night with a pair of scissors she pilfered from my packed suitcase:-) I may have cried. It's only hair. I know, I know.

Okay, back to packing!

The "Things I'll Miss" List

2011-05-31T08:05:00.001-04:00

I'm pretty sure I'll be adding to this list for weeks but Kevin thought it'd be a good idea if I got one started, and I totally agree.

Things I'll Miss:

Being at home with the kids
My daily bath
Daily trips to the playground
Spending 2.5 hours at Starbucks each morning, writing whatever I want
Frappes
The metro
Street donuts
Easy access to all of Europe
Hearing a cell phone go off in a crowded place and knowing it's not mine
Spending less than two seconds each day thinking about what to wear
Baklava
Telecommuting in my pajamas
Afternoon naps with Clementine
Playing an integral role in Gabriel's education
Greek yogurt
Weekend excursions to Greek islands
Oranges
No homework
Cheap wine
The fact that the kids are given a sweet or a cookie every single time they venture into a grocery store

Things I'm looking forward to leaving behind:

Our washer and dryer (specifically wringing the water out of our clothes since the spin cycle seems to have gone on a permanent hiatus)
Our mattress
Greek TV
The color scheme in our apartment (including the portrait of the crying boy)
Planning my bath ahead of time (the hot water heater has to be turned on 30 minutes ahead of time)
Souvlaki (Sorry, I've had my fill for a while!)
Working from 8 to 10 p.m. at night
Navigating a stroller through the streets of Athens
Greek graffiti
Carbs:-)
Metro strikes (okay, strikes in general)

Things I'm excited to return home to:

Our friends and family
Finally meeting Baby Bella!
Kasane's wedding
Stephanie's wedding
Summer in Richmond
Watching Gabriel get reacquainted with his friends
Driving (I haven't been behind the wheel of a car since February 25!)
An overhead shower (the bath is nice but sometimes...)
The DOLLAR
Swim team
Being able to read the labels in the grocery store
Knowing our pediatrician is right down the street (knock on wood, we haven't needed a doctor here)
Flushing toilet paper. Every. Single. Time.
Sunscreen that costs less than 18 Euro a bottle (Crazy!)

Our apartment's nearly packed up. Our landlords came by and spot-checked it this morning (hello big ole deposit refund), and luckily, they were totally cool about the IKEA lamp and end table that Gabriel accidentally destroyed last month. He was reaching for a toy that was out of reach and a big old marble shelf perched atop a radiator came crashing down. We're lucky it didn't land on him. I had told the G-man we'd have to use his college savings to pay for his destruction (I jest) but, thanks to very cool landlords, it looks like he'll be able to go to college after all... so yay for that!

First Chair

2011-05-26T15:41:00.001-04:00

Our apartment has become an orchestra. In the kitchen, there's a small table where the kids eat many of their meals and snacks. The table only has two chairs. At some point, weeks and weeks ago, both children agreed that one of the chairs was in a better position than the other--out in the open instead of wedged between the table and the fridge. They started referring to the better of the two chairs as "first chair" and the chair in the corner as "second chair." When they woke up and headed in to breakfast each morning, there was always a mad race for "first chair." Without fail, the child who didn't make it to the chair first inevitably wound up in tears on the floor... not a great way to start the day for anyone, but it was particularly unfortunate for two groggy parents.

Mom gave me a great suggestion related to all things "sharing." She stole it from a teacher she works with. The teacher has two kids, and one kid gets the odd days while the other gets the even ones. On odd days, Child A gets to do everything first, best, whatever. On the even days, it's Child B's turn to get all the good stuff. She claims the even/odd solution eliminated all sharing/taking turns bickering. And it keeps her from having to constantly keep track of whose turn it is to do what. We figured we'd give it a whirl.

Gabriel was born on the 14th, so he's become our even child. Clementine was born on the 17th, so she's odd. It doesn't matter that she doesn't understand that May 26 is an even day. She gets that we're switching off days, and that's all that matters. We're bundling a few things under this even/odd umbrella: who gets "first chair" all day, who gets to pick the playground we go to, who gets to pick the DVD they watch while I cook dinner... you know, all the important stuff:-)

Since today was an even day, Clementine sat in "second chair" all day. But she couldn't have cared less. Because, ya know? Tomorrow is an odd day. She must have reminded me 50 times today, "Mommy, tomorrow Clementine first chair!"

Child's Play

2011-05-26T06:46:00.001-04:00

It's raining outside. The kids are playing a game they call "packing for London." It involves taking all the clothes out of their closet, packing them in laundry bags, and dumping the bags' contents on the living room sofa. What's that they say about life imitating art? Is there a comparable expression for life imitating travel?

Loose Tooth!

2011-05-24T16:24:00.000-04:00

I was called into the living room tonight to witness THE FIRST LOOSE TOOTH. I saw it with my own eyes. I touched it with my own finger. It is confirmed. Gabriel has a loose tooth. It's one of his bottom ones and, truthfully, I think the one next to it is loose as well. He's thrilled. Kevin told him about the Tooth Fairy and how she'll leave him a dollar under his pillow. I made some sort of audible squeak that Kevin interpreted (correctly) as "Hasn't she ever heard of inflation? That's what I made in 1987!" He shot me a look that said "Keep quiet." No need to go messing with a good thing when there's a whole mouthful of teeth following this first one.

Gabriel's had a gap-toothed smile since he was a year and a half old and knocked his front tooth out, taking a dive into the side of the bathtub. For five years we've answered people's questions about the missing tooth, educating young and old alike that, nope, kids don't naturally loose teeth at age 2, 3, 4... you get the drift. Lots of playground convos have been had. Tonight, we are one step closer to recovering the smile we haven't seen since late 2006. I'm not 100% sure I'll recognize it when I see it!

Ferry Boat Travel Tips

2011-05-24T05:16:00.000-04:00

I thought I'd share a few ferry boat travel tips we've picked up during our adventures and recently utilized on the eight-hour boat ride to Santorini. Sadly, we gained these tips the hard way... a four-hour ferry ride last month that didn't go quite so well!

Before beginning an eight-hour ferry ride, invest in a few Playmobile figurines (at 1.99 Euro a pop) or your plastic figurine of choice. The kids picked them out ahead of time... deliberating long and hard in the process... but they didn't get to open them until the ferry pulled away from the dock. We easily bought ourselves an hour or two with these.

I also spent two Euro on a travel version of Connect Four. I could buy it because, unlike a bunch of the other travel games, none of the game pieces were in Greek:-)

Clementine doesn't quite get it but that hardly mattered. She ADORED inserting all the little pieces, filling the entire board, and then releasing all the pieces into the tray and beginning the process all over again. It was a huge win for all involved and probably bought us two hours. Not even joking a little bit!

And then we were super tickled when, after eventually pulling out the laptop and resorting to a DVD (which I hate to do... but... sigh), the kids complained about the glare on the screen. The only fix was building a tent for them out of my fleece jacket.

See no evil, hear no evil. For as long as Pocahontas lasted, it was like Kevin and I were on a genuine vacation:-)

Choosing your battles

2011-05-24T04:54:00.000-04:00

I've decided that the key to successful parenting is knowing when to choose your battles. Like, say, if your son informs you he'll be wearing a snorkel mask to the playground, I'm a big believer in just rolling with it.

I pull off my second Greek birthday party

2011-05-23T05:31:00.000-04:00

In the two months between Gabriel's birthday celebration and Clementine's, I learned where to buy birthday plates, hats and candles, and even managed to put my hands on a box of matches. My Greek's not much better than it was in March but I'm calling the Dora plates and hats PROGRESS.

I also made the executive decision that Clementine did not need a themed cake badly enough for me to spend 30 Euro on it:-) I learned my lesson with Gabriel's Spiderman cake! We walked up to the bakery and I let her choose a cake from amongst the 10 or so delights that were ready and waiting to be brought home for the bargain (cough) price of 19 Euro. God, I'll be glad to get home to dollars:-) She went with a cake that was chocolate through and through.

I think I spent all of 10 Euro on her gifts. I felt a little bad but we're so close to packing everything up that I didn't want to spend on anything that might not fit in a suitcase on the way home. As a parent, I could stand to regularly remind myself that--at this age--it doesn't matter. She LOVED everything she received. A little purse. A Playmobile person. A few very cheaply made miniature princess dolls. Two little plastic baby bottles for her doll. And Gabriel was adorable, helping her open all her gifts. The whole thing was priceless.

The funny part was that her party expanded ever so slightly when Kevin called his mom at the last minute to see if she wanted in on the action. So Gramma sat on her laptop and Skyped in for the singing and the gift opening, which was cute. The kids REALLY wanted to offer her a piece of cake.

The world really is starting to feel smaller.

Things I'll miss

2011-05-23T05:02:00.000-04:00

Lately, I've been thinking about all of the things I'll miss when we leave Greece. Some things are, of course, Greek. Others are less cultural and simply related to the fact that I've been home with my kids for the past three months. Like, for instance, I'm really going to miss our afternoon naps.

Gabriel's Portrait

2011-05-21T17:23:00.001-04:00

I think I'm living in denial. If I don't blog about it, maybe our three months in Greece won't actually end:-) Two weeks from today, we'll be in the U.S. I've got about a million different things to blog about but right now, I'm just gonna post something super frivolous and fun.

A couple of months ago, I started communicating with an artist I really love... Clare Elsaesser. I've been a fan of her shop on Etsy for a good long while, and finally, I just broke down and asked her if she'd consider painting Gabriel's portrait.

Clare does a ton of beautiful women lounging about in bed, which I love...

And a lot of bathers, which I also love.

But I explained that what I needed was a painting of a six-year-old boy wearing, ya know, clothes:-) Clare is an obliging soul!

I've been wanting to have G's portrait painted for the past several years, and if I don't do it soon, I'm going to wind up with a portrait of a teenager.

Clare and I hatched a plan and she's been working on the portrait out in California while we've been traipsing around Greece. I sent her a ton of photos I loved of Gabriel and she compiled the pieces she loved into a sketch, which she shared with me earlier this spring.

I wanted something in the painting to reflect Guatemala. After I shared a bunch of the photos from our 2009 trip, Clare seized on the volcanoes that wound up in the backgrounds of so many of our pics... I'm so glad she did. I can't think of fostering Gabriel in Guatemala without thinking about the volcanoes we saw each and every day.

So, today... Clare sent us a sneak peak of the painting! And it's ALMOST done! And it's PRACTICALLY making me ready to leave Greece because I can barely wait to see it in person and hang it on a wall!

I'll share a final photo soon. In the meantime, who's taking guesses on how long it will take Clementine to ask where hers is?

P.S. If you like Clare's stuff, you'll probably get a kick out of her blog as well. Enjoy!

Clementine's birthday!

2011-05-17T09:05:00.000-04:00

I've got a lot to fill everyone in on because we just got back from four fabulous days in Santorini. But that's all getting pushed aside because, as they say, it's time to party...

Today, Clementine Tsehaynesh is THREE!

She missed celebrating her birthday in the most beautiful place on Earth by one day. We're back in Athens and she couldn't be more excited for her "party." We're replicating Gabriel's birthday because, in her mind, that's now the DEFINITION of an awesome birthday. Ya know... her parents, her brother, and her hanging out... pretty much like always except with cake! She keeps saying, "Today is my birthday! Not Gabriel's?" She's very concerned about sharing:-)

The kids and I went out and picked up her cake this afternoon. I picked up a few trinkets (all quite packable for the trip home) at the Jumbo before we left for Santorini. Our dinner date has been set for weeks... Pizza Hut, baby. It's not sexy and it doesn't have international flava but, as far as the kids are concerned, it's the happiest place in all of Greece. So there ya have it.

We've come a long way since this time last year when we celebrated her second birthday and our first with her.

As with both of my children, birthdays are a mixed bag. I spend a good part of the day thinking about their birth mothers, wondering how they're getting through the day. For Clementine it's a little different since, in Ethiopia, birthdays aren't given the same emphasis. Most likely, her birthday is an estimate, so I find myself wondering what the seasonal markers are that her mother uses, the markers that trigger her memories.

When you adopt from Ethiopia, you make a commitment to send post-placement reports via your agency until your child turns 18 years old. With Guatemala, we were only asked to send reports through the end of Gabriel's first year at home. I'm happy to send the reports, which are translated and (according to our agency) filed in a central office in the region where Clementine is from. Ethiopian families who make an adoption plan are encouraged to visit the office and ask for the reports if they'd like to keep up with their child's progress. One of my greatest wishes is that those reports really are accessible to Clementine's mother and that she is able to watch our daughter grow.

Just Because

2011-05-12T16:14:00.000-04:00

This post is 100% just because. I was downloading photos from my iPhone today, and this one's just too cute not to share.

Cake Pops

2011-05-12T15:58:00.000-04:00

If I live to be 100, I will never understand how Starbucks possibly thinks it can get away with charging two Euro (translation: THREE DOLLARS) for a bite of cake on a stick.

I've negotiated a couple hours of "me time" every morning, and while I hate to skip the locally owned cafes, Starbucks offers free Wi-Fi and they're open uncharacteristically early for Greek standards. So I stare at these things every single morning while I'm waiting for my latte, and every single morning I look up at the ceiling and silently ask "Why?"

A croissant costs 95 cents. For two Euros, you can get yummy breadamajiggers that will actually make you feel as if you've eaten something. Who is buying these one-bite-of-stale-cake-on-a-sticks? I must know. If they're selling these in the U.S., can someone please comment and tell me you've had a "cake pop" and you think it tasted delicious and was well worth the money? Someone, anyone? Otherwise, wondering about these things may ultimately drive me so freakin' batty I wind up buying one.

Greek Sidewalks

2011-05-12T15:54:00.000-04:00

When we head back to the States, I will not miss Greek sidewalks.

I will greatly miss our afternoon walks.

A Greek Mother's Day

2011-05-10T08:07:00.000-04:00

This year marks the first year in four years that we haven't celebrated Mother's Day with brunch at a particular Richmond joint we're fond of. Kevin says it's just as well because, do I remember how last year's brunch turned out? Yeah, yeah... I remember. But rose colored glasses are a gift:-)

As far as we can tell, the Greeks don't do brunch. They do breakfast and it's light. Some meat, some cheese, a piece of bread. There is no maple syrup section in the grocery store, if that tells you anything:-) They do lots of midday cafe sitting, for sure, but those outings are devoted to cigarettes, frappes and people-watching.

I'm a fan of two out of three of those activities, so that works out okay.

So, for Mother's Day, we walked up to the square and plunked ourselves down at a cafe. Except that because we're Americans and it was the middle of the day, we also ordered food. And called it a Mother's Day brunch.

We even sort of dressed up. And by dressed up, I mean we all wore our cleanest, least tired traveling clothes. To complete the look, I wore the earrings Gabriel "bought" for me, ya know... that I'd picked out and that he paid for with the Euros in Kevin's wallet. He was sooo excited for me to open them; it's like he had total amnesia that I'd been in the store when he bought them!

Kevin got the memo that Sunday was Mother's Day when I told him Friday morning. He helped Gabriel write a poem that sort of, kind of rhymed. Next year, he's going to be held to a slightly higher standard:-)

The rest of the afternoon was spent at the park.

And calling our own mothers on Skype.

Can't believe we'll be leaving three weeks from tomorrow. Where has the time gone?

What I'm missing

2011-05-06T16:47:00.001-04:00

If there was a downside to living abroad for three months (I realize I've got no right to complain about anything!) it'd have to be the fact that I'm missing some pretty major moments in the life cycle of my family. I'm missing not one, not two, but all three of my siblings' graduations (my sister Ruthie graduates with her master's in nursing tomorrow!) along with the bridal showers of my sister-in-law Stephanie and my best friend Kasane.

Kasane's shower is tomorrow. I feel particularly horrible about missing hers since I'm her matron of honor and my skipping the country has probably guaranteed me the title of "World's Worse Matron of Honor Ever." Luckily, Kasane is pretty much the most forgiving person alive, so I doubt she's holding my absence against me.

Kasane is a full head shorter than me. Always has been.

But growing up, people would ask if we were sisters--even twins. I don't know where they would have gotten that idea...

Oh, except that dressing alike was pretty much our favorite thing to do... EVER. I, for one, was really sad the day we discovered it wasn't "cool" to go to the mall in matching outfits.

Kasane and I lived across an alley from each other when we were in second and third grade. We did a lot of dancing to Tiffany, playing Barbies, and painting shirts with puff paint. Other than those two years, we were letter writers, phone callers, and frequent weekend house guests. It helped that both our mothers and our brothers liked each other too. I've got some great letters from when we were in middle school. Most of them start, "Hi. Wuz up [an up arrow replacing the word "up"]? Do you have a boyfriend? There is a boy I like..." Yeah, those letters were DEEP stuff:-) It's no wonder we stayed friends.

We stayed friends because Kasane is like a sister to me. I can't imagine my life without her. We can go months without talking, we can be grouchy, we can piss each other off and it doesn't matter... not having Kasane in my life would be like trying to run a marathon with only one leg. She holds me up. She lives outside of D.C. and, when we were in the ICU with Dad, she arrived almost immediately, hauling a bag full of snacks and toiletries and magazines and anything else she could think of that we might need while we were there. "Family only" ICU rules don't apply to Kasane. She is family. I know losing her "Uncle Sam" was devastating for her but she was so strong because she knew she was needed by all of us. She and her fiance Jimmy were not only at the memorial service in Maryland (and running errands for us beforehand) but they got in the car and drove all the way to South Carolina so she could stand beside me while we buried Dad. When Clementine fell asleep in the car on the way to the burial, she and Jimmy sat in the car and let her sleep while the ceremony began... letting me concentrate on this incredibly difficult moment that lay ahead of me. Twenty-two years after we met, these are the reasons we're still friends.

There are also plenty of light-hearted reasons we're still friends. She potty-trained my sister Eve. Eve's now 22. Or, she put up with this bridesmaid dress, and said nary a word about it (despite the fact that I knew she couldn't stand it!) For the record, I know the dress is dated but I STILL LOVE IT:-)

So, I think, all things considered, she's been very kind to me... letting me skip out on all kinds of wedding-related duties AND choosing a subtle bridesmaid's dress that's much more likely than mine to stand the test of time.

Kasane, have a wonderful day tomorrow and I can't WAIT to stand beside you as you marry the love of your life!

Very Important Survey Question: My Hair

2011-05-06T05:14:00.001-04:00

I know there's a lot going on in the world right now. I do. But let's focus on something waaaaayyyy more frivolous, shall we?

I don't know what it's come to that I'm asking the Internet for hair advice but here it is.

I'm desperately in need of a haircut. I've been in Greece over two months and with a short 'do like mine, it starts lookin' shaggy around the six-week mark. I'm overdue.

It's occurred to me, that if I EVER wanted to grow the hair out an inch or two, now would be the time. I mean... on a daily basis, no one but my immediate family (okay, and a bunch of Greeks) sees me. If I've got to go through an awkward barrette/headband phase, I could get at least a little bit of it out of the way in the privacy of a foreign country where no one knows me and I don't have to look ridiculous going into the office every day.

The gray is staying. That's been well-documented.

But what about the length? What do you think? Should the short stay? I'm taking votes.

Cast your vote in the comments. Here are the options. Do I...

Option 1

Keep my hair short. This is roughly what it looks when I've actually been tending to it:-)

Option 2

Grow it out to something resembling a stacked bob--somewhere between what I've got now and what I had before I got the super short cut. Maybe something comparable to what I had back in 2005 when we adopted the G-man.

Option 3

Grow it back out to what I had before my drastic chop but just deal with the fact that it's gonna be grayer than it was when I was 26. This is about as long as my hair actually grows before it starts looking crazy witchy. Long, long hair is out of the question. Dad gets all the credit for the thin head of hair I rock.

Okay, I need some honest feedback before I walk my hair into a Greek salon, cross my fingers, and hope for the best!

Keep it short or grow it out? Discuss. I cannot be offended, so don't hold back (Mom, that means you).

Featured today on Pret a Voyager!

2011-05-02T03:50:00.000-04:00

I've followed this travel blog for the last several years, and it's very exciting to share Anne's latest blog entry.

It's part of her boarding pass series and it features... us!

So, as if you weren't sick enough of hearing about our travels, now you get to hear me talk about them some more, albeit in a slightly different venue! Ha. Enjoy:-)

Ciao Carbs

2011-04-30T08:28:00.000-04:00

It had to happen. Eventually a three-month vacation turns into your real life. And you realize you can't keep eating carbs like you're on vacation.

Delicacies that are doing Kevin and I absolutely no good:

Gelato (we were eating it twice a day in Italy)
Cappucinos heavy on the sugar
Pastries
Focaccia (a weakness of mine)
Pizza
Pasta
Baklava
Pita bread
Kinder chocolate (why, oh why, is it so much better than any chocolate you find in the States?!?)
These freakin' amazing anisette cookies I discovered in Italy called brigidini

Something has to be done. We'll be arriving home just in time to start taking the kids to the pool and we're both a tad worried it's not gonna be pretty.

So, back in Athens, we're going on a carb purge. We're not calling it a diet. Just a break from bread and sugar. The kids are off the hook... ice cream will still be a staple of their diet.

It breaks my heart to break up with bread, especially while I'm abroad and it's all so especially delicious, but something's gotta give. Luckily, feta and I are still very much an item.

Some travel moments I don't want to forget

2011-04-29T05:45:00.001-04:00

Sometimes, whether traveling or otherwise, your kids gift you with these little moments that are so funny they instantaneously become a part of family lore. Like, you pretty much know they're never going to die the second whatever-it-is happens. We had a few of those on our Italy trip.

Like, the time we were in the middle of a packed metro train in Rome, jostling against a bunch of well-dressed Italians on their way to work, and Clementine (who I was holding against my hip) shouted at the top of her lungs, "YOU'RE HURTING MY VAGINA!!!! MOM! MY VAGINA!!! MY VAGINA!!!" By the looks on the faces of the majority of commuters in our car, I'd guess they spoke enough English to know what she was talking about. I repositioned her but she kept rehashing the non-event, "MOM, YOU HURT MY VAGINA!!!" I whispered in her ear and promised her pretty much whatever she wanted if she'd just stop talking about her vag on the train.

Or there was the time, later that same day, when we walked solemnly past John Paul II's tomb underneath St. Peter's Basilica. I don't know if it's because he's about to be sainted or just because he's only been dead five years but there was a crowd of mourners in front of his tomb, crying and praying, leaving flowers and lighting candles. Gabriel was wearing a soccer jersey we'd just bought on the street; it's the jersey for a (the?) big Roma team and on the back it's got the name of one of their star players, Totti. Anyway, JP II's tomb was silent except for the crying and there were these two really solemn-faced Vatican guards standing watch over things, overseeing the mourners and looking very proper and dignified about the whole thing. We filed by fairly quickly but as we were passing the second guard, he gave Gabriel a secret thumbs up under his folded hands and chanted "Totti" under his breath. It's like if a guard at Buckingham Palace suddenly broke formation, smiled, and asked you for the time. It just had us in stitches.

And then a few days ago, we were eating lunch at this really famous trattoria called Mario's in Florence, near San Lorenzo. The food was absolutely phenomenal and the service was awesome and now my mission in life will be convincing anyone who goes to Florence to eat there. Anyway, Clementine had to use the bathroom so I took her to the back of the restaurant where we waited in a little open air courtyard for the restroom to be free. After a minute or so, one of the restaurant's cooks opened the door, came out of the little room, and started washing his hands. I peeked in the bathroom and realized it was one of the old-school hole-in-the-floor commodes. I immediately backed away and started looking around for other options... Clementine barely has this whole potty thing down when given every "advantage" and our one attempt at squatting a few weeks back ended quite poorly. I knew I sounded obnoxious but I had to ask anyway, "Are there any other bathrooms she might use?" Shaking his hands dry, he smiled and shook his head before he said, "Today, she will learn something new." I loved his answer. And it's true. She learned something new. I mean, she did sit through the rest of her meal with a wee bit of pee on her shorts but, overall, she survived.

"Home"

2011-04-29T05:04:00.000-04:00

Eek. I fell off the face of the blogging earth. I'm writing this from our Athens apartment, which means we wrapped up the second half of our Italian extravaganza. The entire trip was incredible and we flew home this morning. I'm going to do my best to post some good pics to recap everything. In all, we made it to: Rome, Florence, San Gimignano, Cortona, Siena, Arezzo, Lucca and Pisa. We loved every second of it, and I can't believe how well the kids did with every obstacle/opportunity that was placed in front of them. I had to laugh when we walked into our apartment this morning and Clementine started to cry, "Oh no! I wanted the other apartment!" The poor child has no clue whether she's coming or going but she recovered quickly, and she and Gabriel are now trying on all the pairs of pajamas we didn't pack and that, after nine long days, feel brand-new to them:-) It's good to be a kid.

Cortona

2011-04-24T16:41:00.000-04:00

Am on my way to bed but just wanted to provide the briefest of trip updates. Today we spent the morning exploring the southern side of the Arno River, taking in some great views of Florence in the process.

Okay, yes... I know. Gabriel's hair is looking crazier by the day. I've been trimming it myself since we left the U.S. in February, and when Kevin asks me about it, I tell him I'm bringing back the bowl cut like it's 1985. Seriously, I think they're kind of cute... when done well, which I'm capable of recognizing... is not the case with the G-man's 'do. I digress...

Then we got in the car and drove to Cortona where we spent a really lovely afternoon.

I'm not even joking... Cortona really looks like this:

It's sick.

Cortona is also the backdrop of the book (and movie) Under the Tuscan Sun. Here's Clementine acting overly excited about this fact:

I promise to write more soon. Too tired to press... on. Gotta go get some zzzs so I'm ready for whatever tomorrow brings!