non-tulip festival

last week i got to have a mini pasadena reunion with some of my favorite friends! sachia came to town with amber, a new pasadena-ite who grew up here, so they hosted a little playdate for me & jack and our friends natalie & fallon. (if you're paying attention, natalie is the SAME natalie who was my roommate in college and then later my neighbor in pasadena -- and now we both live in seattle! weird, i know.)

the mamas chatted while the kids played. or rather, the girls played and jack monopolized all the trucks. per usual, he was the only boy there, so he spent a lot of time trying to figure out what the girls were talking about. barbies? lame.

we tried to line them up for a photo and the results were comical. how many adults does it take to get 4 kids to sit still? (not going to lie, doing this reminded me of all the times i stood on the sidelines in pasadena while all the parents tried to set up the kiddie group shots. yessss...finally i'm in the mom crew too!)

this is the best we could get. why oh why must everything be so difficult at this age?

our brilliant plan was to have a play date and then check out the tulip festival, which according to my facebook feed is THE thing to see in seattle in the spring. unfortunately we were way past naptime and nearing a meltdown, so i decided to hit the road -- BUT, since i was so close, i couldn't resist doing a quick drive by. 

side note: i had already driven an hour for the play date, and the tulip festival ended up being another 30 minutes farther away. i was trying to navigate on my phone but doing a crappy job, and by the time i got close to the actual tulips jack looked like this in the backseat:

so he was out, i was in a bad mood for coming so far and seeing nothing, and i still had a 90 minute drive ahead of me. definitely not going to be heading out on a tulip adventure. i turned the car around and managed to snap a couple quick pictures of the giant tulip fields -- they WERE pretty, but i didn't need to touch them to know that. 

then it was homeward bound. jack woke up screaming when we still had 20 minutes to go, that was fun. but at least we'd seen some pretty scenery and partied with our friends. all in all, a successful day.

family bonding

this might finally be my last post about our california trip :) while there we did a lot of good old-fashioned family bonding: catching grant up on movies (like inception & captain america), playing bang!, sitting around, eating food, talking about iphones. some of our extended family came to town too and it was so fun to just sit and chat and do nothing but enjoy hanging out with everyone. since all of us live in different states, opportunities like this don't happen very often -- so i was perfectly content to sit and enjoy being surrounded by my family.

one night, granty cooked for us! authentic mexican bbq. why yes, it WAS completely delicious, thanks for asking :) 

had to fit in the requisite family photo shoot:

the highlight for jack -- oh, you mean, besides being the center of attention in a group of easily amused adults all week? -- was my sister's dog, max. he is SO much more fun than roxy and jack loved him. jack and max would chase each other around the house, lick each other's tortilla chips (shudder), hug and dance and run. it was adorable and has me seriously considering getting a dog.

and then...it was time to head home. i was really sad to leave my family (and the gorgeous 80 degree weather) but as soon as we got back to seattle everything felt right again.

i'm learning that my REAL home is wherever b and jack are, and for now that's in washington. i love being back to our regular routine and our little life up here, and -- miracle of miracles -- even the rain & frigid temperatures (in MAY, people! sheesh) haven't bothered me lately. guess i'm finally growing up.

LA date night(s)

while we were in california, we took fulllll advantage of free babysitting ;) my parents were awesome and offered to watch jack so b and i could have not one but TWO dates. so what do you do with a rental car and parental freedom? head to your old stomping grounds, of course.

i used to take pictures of us in the car like this all the time. it's amazing how much less time you have for myspace self-portraits when you're continually handing sippy cups and train cars to a small person in the back seat.

first, we drove out to west LA. in all the time we lived out there we never went to venice beach, so we were excited to check it out -- especially the canals. but...they weren't really that cool. haha. sort of dried up and ghetto.

then we headed over to the beach. we had such a fun time checking out the boardwalk (& marijuana vendors), watching the surfers & skaters, walking on the sand. it was perfect.

then we headed down the street to tito's tacos, naturally. because you can't be in west LA without a taco with cheese.

while there we had a conversation that went like this:

lyndsey: you know what would be really great for dessert?
brandon: what?
lyndsey: some diddy riese.
brandon: you know how far away diddy riese is from here?
lyndsey: yes. but do you know how far away diddy riese is from seattle?
brandon: you have a point.

and thus we ended up driving to westwood :)

for our second date, we stopped to visit our old neighbors in claremont, then headed to my beloved pasadena. i mean seriously. just looking at these pictures gets my heart all knotted up.

the main point of this visit was to see our BFFs. holy crap i wish the fackrells would move to seattle, life just isn't the same without them. we had dinner at daisy mint, ran a few pasadena errands, scored some organic ice cream at carmela's, then went back to their house to say hey to john c. reilly watch the burbs and eat pretzels & sardines. it was the best.

after these two consecutive date outings, jack wouldn't let me out of his sight for the next three days. but it was totally worth it! thanks, grammie & pop pop, for giving us two nights out.

we have a talker

jack learning to talk is probably my favorite phase of motherhood yet. i am endlessly amused by the random words he yells throughout the day ("milk!" "shoe!" "mom!" "nose!") -- every word is shouted with such enthusiasm. but now he's starting to actually put multiple words together and i LOVE it. 

when i get him up in the morning, he usually says "cereal!" (which sounds actually like "see-wool" and is 10x cuter than the traditional pronunciation) but lately he's been saying "jack cereal, mom cereal" while i pour our bowls. today he was sitting in his high chair eating breakfast while b and i got ready and he said, clear as day, "i like see-wool." amazing! the mind of a toddler will never cease to amaze me. 

he calls his binky "beep beep," making it infinitely easier to understand when he wants it. the beep beep, in fact, is only used at bedtime these days, and as soon as i pop it in his mouth i see his eyes sag a little bit like he knows it's time for sleep. i'm trying to gear myself up for getting rid of it completely, but it makes me sad to realize he'll definitely be over the baby phase when we do. eh. maybe by his 2nd birthday. 

jack loooves to run and usually takes laps around the apartment before bedtime yelling "go go go!" every day, rain or shine, we go outside for an exploration period (meaning i just let him run / walk wherever he wants...we usually end up jumping off walls, playing at the park or going down the "swide") and lately he just wants to run and run. i can't wait for him to run races with me one day!

i've honestly lost count of all the words he can say. once in a while he'll surprise me by saying something i didn't even realize he knew, like "seesaw" or "bee!" (all insects are bees, according to jack.) he knows all the hand motions to the songs we sing at library story time and will start singing "itsy bitsy spider" at random times throughout the day. 

he still loves to read; it's the only time he will sit still all day. i can occasionally get him to color -- he prefers markers over crayons and will say "blue! yellow! green! brown!" no matter what color i pull out -- but usually doesn't like to sit down much otherwise. sometimes he reads books to his stuffed utah bear and it's probably the cutest thing ever, mostly jibberish with the occasional correct word thrown in. i love that monkey and i LOVE hearing his little voice. toddlers are the best. 

easter 2012

we made our california trip extra long so we could be there for easter, five days before granty got home. easter sunday in rancho was sunny and hot and perfect.

we got the jackal a little easter basket: a coloring book, a paint with water book, a bubble gun and exactly 3 eggs containing jelly beans. we swapped the jelly beans out for stickers as soon as he figured out what was going on and started saying "bean! mo! bean!" every five seconds.

he was pretty excited.

after church we hid some eggs in the front yard. i was pleasantly surprised by how well he did with finding the eggs...he's a smart little guy. he loved finding the sesame street stickers inside and would bring us every egg he found, saying "pop!" when we opened it.

i love this shot of jack & his grammie:

we had five more easter egg hunts in the following week and jack still shouts with glee whenever he spots anything oval-shaped. those eggs are the perfect toy! hard to break, easy to fill up with a variety of junk, always entertaining. we might have to keep ours out all year.

the mystery of the blue train

i bought jack a little train from target a few weeks ago, thinking it would be a good distraction for our flight since he plays with it nonstop during all of our shopping trips. (what, don't you give your kids random toys to keep them quiet while you enjoy your target run?) he loves it and i love to hear him driving it all over the apartment saying "coo! coo!" i will never inform him that trains actually say "choo choo!" because it is too adorable.

anyway, yesterday we were enjoying a blustery day from the safety of our patio because mama still wasn't quite ready to deal with seattle rain, and he chucked the train overboard without any warning. it landed in the rain gutter one floor below.

it was too far away for me to reach, so i just left it there thinking i'd call maintenance later or something. and then i forgot about it.

when b got home he checked it out and then went outside to retrieve it, but by the time he got there the train was gone! it was raining pretty hard and we thought maybe the train had gotten swept away in the tumultuous current. unfortunately the rain gutter drained straight into the ground so there was no way we could track it down. i went to bed feeling really sad that i had let the little train down and gotten it lost. not to mention jack kept asking "coo? coo?" whenever he walked by the deck.

THEN, this morning, we rushed out the door at 8 a.m. for a dentist appointment (no cavities, woot!) and there on the landing of our staircase was the blue train! warped and slightly worse for wear, it was sitting right in front of me. i have no idea who retrieved it or how they found it, but we got it back. jack played with it the rest of the day even though little chunks of blue paint, no doubt toxic, kept chipping off and getting all over the place. so happy to have our coo coo back.