Outtakes

I love, love, love having the end product of family pictures but I absolutely despise the process of producing them from start to finish.  First you have to find time in the ridiculous family schedule.  Once you pick a date, you then have to determine what time of day will produce the least number of meltdown victims.  Next, you need to choose family outfits and convince each individual to actually wear them instead of their usual unique style.  Once we load all our people into the car to embark on the journey of said family portraits, we then begin the process of bribing them for good behavior.  Okay good, now we have everyone agreeing to listen and smile politely for the photographer.

We get out of the car and enter the studio.  And this is when all hell breaks loose.  Photo props are being used as imitation weapons, furniture is being used as jungle gym equipment, bows are being ripped out of hair, snacks are being smeared on shirts, etc., etc., etc.

We remind everyone of the promises they made in the car and they straighten up a little and get in front of the camera.   And then 30 seconds later,  one small being decides that nope, not today, I'm not going to cooperate!  She proceeds to play with toys outside of camera range while the rest of us stand their smiling like clowns waiting for the disobliging one to buckle under peer pressure and join us.  And because she doesn't buckle, we physically grab her and force her to join the picture.  This tactic produces beautiful pictures, let me tell you.  Now we have one crying child, one who is hungry, and another who needs to use the bathroom.   And we've only been here for 15 minutes at this point.  This sort of scenario continues for the next 30 minutes at which point we are all just done.  We apologize profusely to the photographer and load everyone back in the car and promise ourselves we will never do this again.  Until next year.

Oh, I forgot about the part where I then have to go through all the proofs and decided which of the very few decent pictures I want to choose.

In the end, we did get some great pictures and I really do love having them.  The good pictures are truly priceless, I just wish the painful.

Here are some of the pictures where you can see someone wasn't in the right spot or happy:

A Day in the Life

Today was one of those days where Matt and I had to exchange what felt like 100 calls/emails while at work (and this was before noon) just to manage the 3 small minions and whatever issue they were having.  Here is just a sampling from this morning:

Exchange#1: Matt, you put the baby in the car with no jacket, you need to drop off her jacket on your way to work.  Oh and we accidentally put her in capri pants and it's December.  Drop off some pants, too.

Exchange#2: Matt: I had Luke run in and drop off the coat and the pants to Coco.  Task complete.

Exchange #3:  Rachael: Matt, did you remember to pick up the baked goods this morning for Luke's music class party?  You know, the one he told us about at 8:00 pm last night?  Matt:  Yes, but we got cookies instead of donut holes because the donut hole containers didn't list the ingredients on it so we got cookies that did.  And by the way, since when are there parties in music class?  Do we believe him?  I dropped him off at school with cookies in hand - he was thrilled.    

Exchange #4: Matt:  I got a call from school that Adrienne's not feeling well, they want to know if she should go to the JCC or if they should send her home on the bus.  I told them to send her to the JCC.

Exchange #5:  Rachael:  I got a call from the JCC, Adrienne didn't get off the bus and they wanted to know if she should have.  They are calling the school to find out where she is.

Exchange #6:  Rachael:  Ok, they found her, she was on the bus headed HOME!  She's still on it so they will drop her off at the JCC.

Exchange#7: Rachael:  Adrienne just called me from the JCC, she made it there.

Exchange#8: Rachael:  Matt, the plan for tonight is for you to pick up Ade and Luke and take them to piano lessons and then I will pick up Coco and meet you at home, is that correct?



Photos: Ade torturing her beanie boos by hanging.
(trying to turn her real beanie boos into the beanie boo key chains that kids are putting on their backpacks)

Mickey Duck giving a big cheesy smile :-)

Thanksgiving 2015

Thanksgiving 2015 was the best one yet!  We made so many memories with the kids it's hard to pick the favorites.  Matt and I had our best times yet at the Pie and Glove 5k.  The kids spent hours in the mildest November weather in recent history out on the trampoline.  They played with baby Violet, they fed her and even took a bath with her. Aunt Emily brought them a garland making kit and we returned home with yard after yard of paper loops.  I fondly remember looping and pasting (yum, paste!) together red and green construction paper as a child.   We filled ourselves to the point of near bursting with Thanksgiving dinner, homemade egg nog, AND, and, and, homemade poutine!  Personally, I could feast solely on the egg nog and the poutine and be far more than content.

 We went to the movies to see The Good Dinosaur, at which, Coco lasted approximately 17 minutes.  Not bad for her first movie.  (I'm secretly happy, albeit jealous, when friends tell me they have young kids who can sit through an entire movie and Coco can't.)  On Friday, we picked out our Christmas tree and brought it home to Rochester.  On Saturday, we visited the Muehe's in Canandaigua for brunch, stopped by to see Santa in his house on Main St, and decorated the tree at home.  Matt and I also had the opportunity to go out with good friends on Saturday night.  As you can see, we had such a busy week but it was all good fun.

We are truly thankful for the chaos and noise that three children and the rest of our family bring to make our holidays so special.

hanging out at home on Sunday after so much fun:

Coco turns 2

Our Mickey Duck has been around the sun twice.  It's been quite the ride.  Even with two doting older siblings and of course, two doting parents shaping her, she's certainly and undeniably her own person.  And she'll make sure you know it.  She's also ridiculously sweet and lovey and radiates happiness.  She's the epitome sugar and spice.  She's currently obsessed with Dora, Mickey Mouse, pistachios, yogurt pouches, books, and her baby cousin, Violet.  She loves to be tickled, chased and flipped upside down.  She is an art lover and likes "paintin'."  Her favorite songs are ABCs, BaBa Black Sheep, Row Row Row your Boat, and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.  She's our petite princess at the 20th-30th percentile for size.  In true third child fashion, she's simply advanced for her two  short years.

In honor of the monumental 2nd birthday, we had a Mickey Mouse themed dinner for her.  We celebrated with MiMi and G-ma and G-pa and she finally figured out the whole presents thing.  She is certainly spoiled by the immediate and extended family who love her and shower her with gifts.  She's a lucky gal to have so many people who  love her and there's nothing like a birthday to remind us of that.  She received such great gifts and for that, we are truly grateful.


Oh, and in case you are wondering why I called her Mickey Duck above, it's because she had Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck confused for a little while and was saying "Mickey Duck."  And because it was just so darn cute, we have nicknamed her Mickey Duck.  


The Cake:

Birthday girl on her actual birthday (day #2 of the cake):

At her party:

Opening an alphabet toy from Aunt Karis, Uncle Tommy, and Violet:

Opening Mickey Mouse figurines from Aunt Emily:

Sporting her new coat from G-ma and G-pa:



























Opening various gifts from Mimi:

Halloween

We had such a beautiful night for Halloween this year - warm, no rain, no sleet, no snow. We'll be paid back with at least 3 consecutive years of traditional Upstate NY weather in the future.

 On Friday, I volunteered in Adrienne's classroom for her Halloween.  Let me tell you, gone are the good ol' days of sugar laden school parties. Adrienne's Kindergarten class had a "Naturally Orange" party.  The "treats" included oranges, sweet potatoes, orange peppers, mangoes, orange juice, and squash - all organic, of course.  I felt bad for them, I really did.

In the afternoon, I took the kidlets to my office's Halloween trick or treating where they easily claimed 5 pounds of candy.  My personal office took a hit and I had to clean it up on Monday when I returned to it.  Sticky notes with scribbles everywhere!  And my swivel chair that I had perfectly positioned the way I like it was all sorts of rearranged.  We had a great time but my little moo cow refused her costume so she went dressed as a toddler who was refusing her Halloween costume.  



















On Saturday, G-ma and G-pa came up to help with the absurd amount of leaves we had in our yard and to see everyone off on their way to trick-or-treat.  We were having a nice dinner until some trick-or-treaters came very early and thus sent our crowd into panic mode. Hurry, get your costume, it's started!  And then the kids moved like I've never seen them move before.  Here's the clan!

Amazon Dollars

Matt and I are the type of people who like to put our own spin on the the traditional.   Life would be much too boring to stick to the standard or status quo.  Our parenting style is no exception to this theme.  Usually children have some sort of opportunity to earn an allowance of sorts but our kids are earning Amazon Dollars.  Apparently, the frequency of my Amazon purchases led some people in our household to believe that everything on Amazon was free.  And thus, the idea of Amazon Dollars was born.  For good deeds, chores, basic good behavior and the like, Luke and Adrienne can earn dollars toward purchases on Amazon.  This has turned out to be a tremendous bribe motivator.  So far, most of the purchases have been Playmobils but Luke is now saving up for a golf cart.  Rest assured, this will never materialize because his Amazon Dollars burn a hole right through the paper they are tallied on and he uses them up rather quickly.  Adrienne, on the other hand, has already learned the reward of delayed gratification.  This little system of ours has been the most successful of anything we've implemented so we are going to stick with it as long as we possibly can.  This "tool" if you will,  benefits Matt and I as well.  For example, I almost forgot my running sneakers as I was trying to get out of the house this morning.  I already had at least 5 bags balanced on my shoulders and coco in tow when I figured out I was missing them.  Luke was standing right there so I said, "Hey Luke, I'll give you an Amazon Dollar if you run upstairs and grab my sneakers for me."  And just like that, I had my sneakers in hand and Luke had an Amazon Dollar. A win-win in my book.

Dressing Up

All I have to say is that my people are cute and full of personality!  Ok, that's not all I have to say.  We went fancy style for Nick and Ashley's wedding last weekend and I have just a few pictures because I literally had my hands full all weekend and was unable to take many pictures.  A quick rundown of how dressing up goes with young children...

 

Luke - at age 8, was excited to be in his "tuxedo" which was really a black suit.  He now wants to wear said tuxedo for school pictures this week.

 

Adrienne - at age 5, if she's not into it, she's just not into it.   Luke was off doing other things and she wanted to be with him and so she almost refused to wear her dress.  She also was upset  because the dress was "itchy and scratchy."  Luckily, she was thrilled to visit the salon to have her hair and nails done and we made sure to tell her she needed to wear the nice dress because her hair and nails looked so nice.  She managed to snag her dress on one of the church pews so I had to quickly remove part of one layer of tulle on the dress.  She could not wait to get that thing off and into her bathing suit for the hotel pool. 

 

Coco - at almost 2, decided she liked her dress but was going to forego any shoes.  So my little pixie was barefoot for the church ceremony but came around and wore her gold sparkle shoes to the reception.

And on top of all that, add in the fact that we had to carry many extra layers on account of the non-cooperating winterish weather!  

 

Luke did a great job as ring bearer and looked so handsome.  Adrienne received many compliments on her beautiful hair and sat nicely in the pew during the ceremony.  In true Coco fashion, she wanted to nurse as soon as we arrived at the church and for the majority of the ceremony that she attended (all of 10 minutes).  We scared some groomsmen with the nursing  and then quickly exited stage left (when the squawking began) and went down to the church basement to play in the sink in the ladies room.  We popped back into the ceremony for the very end then stuck around to wrestle the kids into a family picture with the photographer, who was clearly not amused by the kids. 

 

We made it to the reception and the kids did a few spins on the dance floor (with the background music playing) and then we sent them up to go swimming and had their food boxed up and sent to them.  Lucky for us, Aunty Em played the role of nanny for the weekend! 

 

My closing comments are in regard to Matt.  He had a really humorous and thoughtful best man speech that brought down the house.  He's truly blessed with such natural charisma.  He should've been something akin to a diplomat. 

 

It feels so good to get back to normal life this weekend and to attend to things we've neglected for the last week and a half.  We are looking forward to enjoying the last of the fall weather and then onto all the exciting holidays, including Halloween.

 

Out of the Mouths of Babes

A few funny Coco-isms: what she's been saying these days that we love so much we can't correct:

Mickey Duck (Mickey Mouse)
Mommy Rachael (mommy)
Nigh Nigh Den  (nurse again?)
Fi-fi (this way)
No, Zay Zay, no! (telling her friend Isaiah to stop)


And here she is jumping off the sidewalk on our way out of the JCC:

Kindergarten!

And she's off!  Ade, to Kindergarten, that is.  She's such a cool customer that this transition hasn't fazed her one bit.  She's used to attending 4 full days and 1 half day of school per week so this 5 half days is small beans.  Luckily, she will also have the Kindercrew program at the JCC 3 of 5 afternoons per week for some extra enrichment.  She's such a difficult kid, begging to learn how to read and to be drilled with sight words.  Adrienne has Mrs. Mugnolo and attends in the morning.  Her class is very ethnically diverse and Matt and I joke that she's already in the AP class.  Guess what she likes best about Kindergaren so far?  The playground and the monkey bars

The picture with a pantsless Coco was another morning waiting for the bus.

!

Dewey Beach 2015

 

I'm always wanting to improve myself, you know?  And making us better "beach people" seems like a good place to start my improvement plan.  Well, I'm happy to report that we have once again continued on our year-over-year progress path.  Sure, there are still some areas of improvement like, mainly, Coco's sleep, Coco's ability to detach herself from my person, Coco's ability to behave in a restaurant, etc.  As you can see, we have one specific area to target for next year.  

 

So let's visit the areas that seem to be well on their way to perfection:

 

• sitting on the beach for hours on end - we are just really, really impressive in this area.
• We have absolutely mastered sending Luke and Ade to flag down the Planet Ice truck on the beach and retrieve treats for the adults.

• Overall beach setup: chairs, umbrellas, snacks, coolers - set in a very strategic alignment

• Wave jumping  - ok, maybe not me, but others (I did get in a few times), Luke =MVP
• Exploring new Dewey Beach offerings - this year's highlights were:
•    Dewey Beach Beer Company
•    Jungle Jim's water park (so much fun!)
•    Que Pasa mexican restaurant
• Visiting our annual mainstays:
•     The Rehoboth Beach Boardwalk
•     The little breakfast place about a block away that seems to have no name
•     Outlet shopping
•     35 trips to Walmart

 We thoroughly enjoyed having the Gordons join us this year! We had lots of great food and conversation.  I think my favorite part about our trips is witnessing the shear, uninhibited joy of the kids on the beach, in the ocean, on the excursions, etc.  This was obviously a very quick recap of a fabulous trip!