no april fools here

wow, my life is flying by these days. april?? wasn't it just january? crazy stuff. i need to be better about documenting our lives before it's gone. i always thought it was funny when i'd look in my sweet grandma's fridge and find salad dressing from 2002, but now i kind of get it. life just gets going and before you know it 10 years are gone and you still haven't cleaned out that old ranch dressing. gotta stay on my toes :)

b's been working a lot. i've been working not as much and i kind of love it. less stress, more time for researching fun kid craft ideas and learning new things. i'm simultaneously reading a toddler discipline book and the steve jobs biography, both are equally fascinating. my little brother comes home from mexico next week (!!!) and we're so excited to see him. and, we spent the weekend reveling in the word of god, thanks to living prophets who speak to us at general conference every six months. seriously, it is SUCH a boost for my soul, listening to those talks and songs for two days straight. i am lucky to be a mormon.

oh, and mr. jack is cuter every day. i took him to the kids quest museum last week, he wasn't a fan, but at least we got out of the house. and don't mind his vicious facial scar, it has since cleared up. toddlers have quite the knack for self-injury.

he's always my little buddy and i love running errand with him, except when he howls about having to sit in his carseat. he loves to point out facial features -- "EYES! mowww! eeeear!" and always pinches my nose when he gets to "NOse!" he's a great runner and will run run run all over the place, especially right before bedtime when he takes laps around the ottoman. he's a good eater but only when he wants to be -- some days (like today) he'll eat little more than yogurt and milk. he knows tons of animal sounds and names and even a few letters and colors. he says "coo! coo!" every time he sees a train, and calls every clock (every circular object, for that matter) a "tick tock."

it rained a lot last week so one day i'd decided we'd had it with being indoors. i bundled both of us up in coats and rainboots and we played in the rain! it was pretty fun, actually. jack loved it.

not much else going on around here but life is really good. now if we could only get some more sunshine... ;)

may the odds be ever in your favor

hooray, we saw it! i read hunger games when i was pregnant with jack and finished that puppy off in about three days, followed closely by the next two additions. b read all three books over christmas break 2011 and might have been even more excited than i was to see the movies. we'd been watching all the trailers and emailing each other links to spoiler alert & gossip sites and bought tickets for opening night as soon as they went on sale. we were PUMPED.

since this was a movie worth seeing in theaters (doesn't happen too often these days, especially when you suffer from city-wide babysitter scarcity) we decided to go big or go home -- and ponied up for tickets to the ipic theater. this is a high end line of theaters (with a location in pasadena, holla!) with a super swanky vibe -- the lobbies are very lounge-y with gourmet food & drink options, bigscreen tvs, a full bar, etc. the theaters themselves have two types of seats, full recliners and cushy oversized sofa chairs, and waiters even bring food to your seat.

we opted for the cheaper seats and snuck in our own treats ;) but it was still off the hook. such a good movie and such a fun way to see it.

cushy-seat self portrait + my cute date:

even the bathrooms were awesome. and full of hunger games signage ;)

i came home and did a quick speed-read of book 1 over the weekend, just for fun. then i had a dream about peeta last night and b was nowhere in the picture. not sure if that's a good sign or a bad sign. (oh, and we still have the printables up in our apartment;) guess it's time to start a countdown for movie #2!

things are looking up

hooray! life is good. i actually wrote a whole post yesterday about how grumpy i've been lately -- turns out this seasonal affective disorder is a real thing -- but lucky for you, i didn't have time to finish it so i never hit publish. besides the whole constant-rain issue, i also accidentally deleted my next blurb book after spending 10 hours on it and i've just been in a bad mood for a week. boo. cranky lyndsey is not a fun lyndsey.

but just like that, 24 hours later i'm a happy girl again!
the sun came out today for a few hours.
jack and i headed to the mall, where i scored probably the best retail deal of my LIFE on some new boots ($120 boots for $7, thank you very much), we played in the play area with our favorite friends, and then met up with b for a tasty lunch.
jack took a 4 hour nap, i went to the latest seattle blogger meetup, b & i watched survivor.
AND we finally got ourselves a babysitter for this weekend because you know we've already had opening weekend tickets for hunger games since three weeks ago ;)
i'd say this was a pretty good day -- and just in time too, because i was starting to lose it.

in other news, jack and i built our first fort last week and it was so fun. i guess that's one highlight of being stuck indoors all the time.

jack has been talking a TON lately and throwing out new words all over the place. i have to really pay attention because he'll point out objects or make appropriate animal noises and i'm never expecting it! we're trying to train him to say "grant" in preparation for uncle grant's homecoming next month, but mostly it comes out sounding like "grok." we'll take it. he also likes to climb inside the ottoman, lay down and pretend to sleep by making little snoring noises. he is too funny.

here's hoping for another sunny tomorrow.

in no particular order

not a whole lot has been going on around here of late. lots of errand running and dinner dating and getting overly excited every time a truck drives by (jack's favorite thing), per our usual. and i kind of love it. especially when my days involve playing with this little guy.

we're still working on the whole tantrum thing. it's not perfect but we're getting there. plus, jack's got a lot of cute moments to make up for the bad ones -- bad like when he screams at me and throws a plate of ketchup & chicken nuggets on the carpet and i have to count to 10 before hysterically laughing. (if i don't laugh, i'd probably cry. so, laughing it is.)

he is starting to talk like crazy and it's the BEST. he's learning a couple letters and colors and does all the hand motions to our songs (including fist-pumping and a tiny "ooray!" for "if you're happy and you know it"). he runs and jumps and holds my hand in the street and feeds himself cereal for breakfast every morning. he's completely obsessed with mickey mouse clubhouse and those dannon drinkable yogurts. basically, he's awesome.

in other news, we had snow, hail, rain, drizzle, sunshine and 60 degree temps -- all in the past four days. seattle's weather is crazy but i love it. i can't believe we've been here for almost nine months! sometimes i still feel like i'm settling in, but other times it really does feel like home. we've made ticket to ride friends, the librarian knows jack's name, i know the fastest shortcut to trader joe's. we're set.

so set, in fact, that i'm an official state of washington business owner (which you probably already know if you're my facebook friend). i've decided to take my freelancing biz in a slightly more professional direction -- meaning i have an official email address and i actually file taxes now ;) my business license arrived last week and i even have an "under construction" page on my website. i feel so blessed to be able to grow my little business, and i'm excited about what's to come. i really, really love being a full-time mommy...but it's SO nice to be able to plug into a professional network for a few hours a day and get 'er done.

we've got lots to look forward to around here -- hunger games is coming out in 12 days (yes, we already bought tickets for opening night, woot!), adjusting to daylight savings, and welcoming my little brother home! he gets back from his two-year stint in mexico in less than a month and we are SO excited. jack and i made a little countdown chain to mark the days...

but jack isn't really quite clear on exactly what you're supposed to do with it. 

anyway, that's an update from us. maybe it won't take me 11 days to blog again :)

a little too 80s

a few weeks ago we went to a surprise party for one of b's co-workers. it was an 80s theme so we did our best to dress the part. (and when i say best, i mean b found a shirt at goodwill and i pulled random crap out of my closet -- yay legwarmers, you were such a good 2005 impulse buy.) here we are, ready to party...and don't mind jack's cameo, his baby mullet fits the theme although he had to stay home:

the party was fun, i guess. except that the host's husband mistook b for another (male) co-worker's live-in argentine boyfriend. didn't realize b's 80s look made him look quite that gay, but maybe it was a compliment. ha! at least the boozy gourmet mac & cheese was tasty that night...we bailed right after dinner and came home to watch this is it with t&a. now THAT'S my idea of a good night.

called it

our weekend turned out pretty good after all.

when i wrote that last blog post, i really had a feeling jack had an ear infection...but he never gets a fever with those (a common telltale sign) and since there's really no way to KNOW if they have an ear infection unless you bring them in, i still hesitate a little. for jack, my telltale sign are those horrendous mood swings, so i figured we were onto something. i took him to urgent care on saturday and wouldn't you know -- double ear infections.

poor little monkey! we got him some amoxicillin stat and fortunately, contrary to his last ear infection, he loooves the stuff and asks for "mo! mo!" after each dose. i'm pretty sure he is feeling better already because he spent the morning running in circles around our kitchen island saying "go go go!" he still won himself a free pass from church, though, so i went alone today and spent three hours trying not to fall asleep with all my newfound alone time.

since we had that mystery solved, b and i still had our date night last night. (not too awful to leave your infected toddler with a sitter, right? ;) we picked up take out from our favorite lot no. 3 and went to lincoln square cinema. for some reason washington hasn't caught onto 21st century movie theater technology and lincoln square is the only stadium-seating theater near us. worth it!

the artist was amazing and i hope it wins all the awards tonight at the oscars. (btw, did you know that "attend academy awards" is actually on my bucket list? i've been officially obsessed with that show since i was little...but i realize at this point in life my best bet for attending is probably via some type of make-a-wish foundation and seeing as how other required conditions for that type of activity are far less than desirable, i'm not holding my breath. but a girl can still dream. and yes laura w. i'm officially jealous of you ;) it's a silent film which was super fun -- reminded me of my film class days when we'd screen movies from the 1920s. i love how the absence of dialogue makes you focus so much more on the acting, music and cinematography to learn the storyline. as someone who grew up in a family trained to communicate frequently through movie and tv show quotes, it's always a little disconcerting to lack those speaking parts -- but i totally loved it all the same.

after the movie we went to starbucks and holed up at a table right next to the window and just sipped caramel apple cider and talked. that might have been my favorite part of the night.

cookie therapy

omg. toddlers are the worssst.

jack screamed his head off pretty much the whole morning. visited a cute elderly couple from church...he cried so much the adorable old man decided to go take a nap halfway through the visit, despite the fact that the adorable old woman kept bringing in old cars and trucks from her "grandkid stash" to try to distract jack. nothing more embarrassing than two people (who raised 6 kids) observing your clueless, inept parenting skills. drove to joann's fabrics (i live right in the middle of two joann's fabrics and BOTH are 20+ minutes away, so annoying)...he screamed the whole way. did okay IN joann's because there were plenty of cool things to pull off the shelves and throw on the floor. drove home from joann's...screamed the whole way, except for the 5 minutes of peace i got by feeding him a fruit strip; once that was gone it was back to screaming. got home, tried to feed him lunch...more screaming, back-arching, plate-throwing, etc.

what to do? i just put him to bed of course -- my go-to response when i don't know what else to do with the kid. he fell asleep within 4 minutes. i then proceeded to the kitchen and ate 4 chocolate chip cookies, which i baked last night and have already regretted. sometimes you really need some cookies.

i think i'm just in a bad mood overall. boring work week, a few personal setbacks, too much comparing myself to other people. i can't WAIT for the weekend mostly because we finally got ourselves a babysitter (could not get one. single. person. to babysit over the past three weeks!) and we are finally going to dinner & to see the artist, something i have been dying to do for a month now. that is, assuming we are still going. b has an ear infection (i know this because a doctor come to our house at 1:30 a.m. last night...i didn't even know you could get a doctor to do housecalls, thanks microsoft) and we all know how well men handle pain / sickness. he & jack have had the same snotty, coughing cold all week so who knows, maybe jack has an ear infection too and that explains all the screaming. or we could just chalk it up to molars, growth spurt, deep hatred of everything i do, etc.

also, you know what's weird? the fact that my life is pretty much compartmentalized based on how much we've moved. i'm working on creating volume 2 of my blog-to-book series (2009 - 2010) and i've almost forgotten about all the crazy stuff we did. things like chasing crazy people through subway stations and touring movie landmarks and happy babysitter-free weekends in LA -- things that totally make up who i am, though none of my current friends would even know about them. i miss those days.

so anyway. i think i'll take the afternoon off.