Memorial Day Weekend

Memorial day weekend was pretty awesome. Matt is finishing up his project right now so he has a lot more flexibility than usual since he is writing. We took full advantage of this. :)

Saturday we went on the beach like usual. It was perfect weather and their was a boardwalk festival that morning. We came early enough to get parking (yes!) and we also bought our season passes.  

It turned out too that there was a small parade an hour after we showed up. Madeleine was excited. There were "blue cars" (police cars) and candy. 

There were no real floats. Just different people in cars throwing out candy and different bands playing music. I loved the bagpipes and this band.

You might not be able to tell from the photo, but these guys had sequins all over their jackets. They looked fabulous.

Sunday we watched movies all day, and Monday was full of parties. The highlight was Madeleine seeing a real frog for the first time. She really wasn't sure what to make of it. At first she called it a bug, and then she growled at it before deciding that maybe it was a frog.

Runaway

This girl. She is my wild thing.

Today I made quesadillas with guacamole for lunch. Madeleine happily took her plate and was eating it on the porch. After a few minutes, she popped back in the house to tell me she needed more. I looked her in bowl and the quesadillas were there but the guacamole had been licked out. I told her she needed to at least take a few bites from the quesadillas before I'd give her more guacamole. 

Wrong answer.

She screamed and stomped around outside. Furious that I wouldn't budge.

After a while of this, she stopped crying.

"Bye Mommy. B's mommy, not you."

Then she ran off to my neighbor's home.

I could see her the whole way there.

I walked inside to grab my shoes before Baby X and I went off to get her.

When I got there, Madeleine was sitting on their lawn chairs eating her quesadillas.

"B gone."

I knew that they were at the park. I waited for her to finish eating, before asking her if she wanted to find "B and Dodger." She grabbed my hand and off we went to find our friends.

Mother's Day

It's Mother's Day again. This Mother's Day was pretty low key. We went to church and then the beach. It's the first time this year, and I'm so excited for the weekends to come. We didn't get in the water this time. Between Matt's surgery and Madeleine's fear of the water, we didn't see much point of getting our swimsuits. The sand was wonderful though, and Madeleine was thrilled to discover shells. She was so excited. She loaded up her little truck we bought with shell and drive it in the sand. It was buried a few times on accident when a sand tunnel collapsed, but Madeleine would run and grab her little blue shovel and dig it out again.

The beach was pretty empty and the clouds were moody. They were so thick and gray and the sky just faded into the ocean. We couldn't see and of the boats or airplanes but Madeleine kept looking for them whenever she heard them.

We left after a while and came home to a broken fridge and no food. We ended up eating ice cream and going to bed, which I guess is a pretty anticlimactic ending to the day. :)

PS. Blogger won't publish my responses to comments on old post. I'm going to try again in a few days, but sorry if I didn't get back to you! I appreciated all the advice about daycare. 

May Day festival

Our local Waldorf school has a May Day celebration.

It had a craft sale. There were many amazing crafters, surprisingly. So far in New Jersey, the craft shows has been duds. But this one was small but great. The best part was meeting one of my favorite doll makers! One of Madeleine's dolls is getting a lot of love and need repairs, and this lady was nice enough to give me advice on how to fix her! I'm pretty excited. Meanwhile Madeleine had fun looking at her dolls. When we had to leave she helped put the dolls "to bed" (away) and then said goodbye to all of them. It was really cute.

Right after that it was time for the May pole. I was pretty bored to be honest, but Madeleine was entranced. She clapped and danced along on the side and when they invited kids to come out to the field at the end she was one of the first ones out.

Watching the older kids dancing.

After that we bought a few tickets and did a few activities. This was probably my favorite part. The first one Madeleine did was go dig for treasure in the sand box. Madeleine was SO excited that they had colored water rocks buried in the sand. She would start shouting out the color of the rocks when she first saw them and then would carefully line them on the edge so she could dig for more. They were her special treasures throughout the day. She would carefully give them to me while she climbed on the playgrounds, and then ask for them back as soon as her hands were free again. 

After that we made flower crowns. I love how they made them. They braided fabric so we could just stick the flowers in the braid. It was pretty and way easier than the one I made for Easter.

Madeleine would hand me the flowers and feathers. When we finished, she told me she was ready to go home to show "B and Dodger". So we did and played with our friends.

I love going to the waldorf school's festivals. We want to the Michaelmas festival last year and really enjoyed that too. I love that little boys run around with flowers in their hair while sword fighting. It reminds of the little boys in our neighborhood. I like that they aren't so influenced by being "manly" and play with what they like.

Lost things

With two toddlers now in the house life is getting even busier. I often find myself writing pretend blog post in my head and never getting around to writing them. Hopefully soon I'll find more time to sit and write. 

In the meanwhile, life has been pretty amazing. We now have two little people walking around the house. Baby X decided last week that he wanted to walk more than crawl. Madeleine couldn't be more excited about it. They play all day with each other. It's the best.

We have been traveling a lot. With Madeleine being a bit older, we have gone to NYC twice this last month and then DC this last weekend for a wedding. It's really odd for me not to have weekends to myself. Between Matt getting toe surgery and the traveling the house fell into a huge mess. I lost every item that was important to me.

First the computer screen broke. So we had to shell money out for another computer. I wasn't thrilled about it and I'm still using my old computer with a broken screen. With that said, I'm surprised how much I'm loving having yet another computer in the home. Matt can now leave his mostly at work and I like having a flex computer that plays ted talks or music throughout the day.

Then a few days later my wallet went missing. That was my 3rd favorite possession after my wedding rings. It was pretty traumatizing but after a week of looking we gave up. I'm still hoping it turns up.

Then just this weekend my wedding rings disappeared.

This whole experience has been kind of weird. It's made me realize how much Matt and I have turned to minimalism. For each thing, we talked and discussed what need to replace, and in the case of our wedding rings, we had a conversation about what they represented and that it was okay. Matt offered to replace them, but for now I think I'll just use a ring already have.

Having my favorite items lost made me realize that we could let go a few more things in our home. I put a handful of items on freecycle and dropped off a lot of baby clothes at a donation place. We are around 1,100 for things that we have got rid of so far this year. I'm slightly off on my counting. We're getting ready to rid ourselves of even more things as we are preparing to switch apartments. 

I'm realizing more that I like my home to have space for the things we love, not full of the things we like. I love having room for the kids to paint and make messes. I like that I can host bookclub and have people over to dinner with little stress. I like that Madeleine and Baby X have plenty of room to run trucks and cars around the house, and that Madeleine running through our house isn't the end of the world. These things are more important to me right now.