Ilequipped again

I may have to stop reading my sister-in-law’s blog.  I think if she weren’t so nice, I’d have to hate her.  For those who don’t know her, she’s Brian’s wife, Maggie, so technically she’s Chris’ sister in law.  For the record, she has 2 little boys:  Ben is  2 1/2 and Sam is 10 months.  You’d think she’d have her hands pretty full, right?
It all started when I read her blog about their pizza dinner.  This involved her own whole wheat pizza dough and her own homemade pizza sauce, as well as vegetables from their Community Supported Agricultural farm box for topings.  Little Ben was in charge of tearing the fresh mozzarella.  Oh, and she thoughtfully made extra dough and froze it so she’d be all ready for the next time they want homemade pizzas

Now, when I make a pizza, I do the following:
1.  preheat oven
2. take out pizza from freezer
3. remove plastic wrap 
4. place pizza in oven
5.  try to throw together a salad but have to stop at just lettuce and dressing because by the time I finally get the lettuce washed and the smoke alarm turned off (yes, I neglected to clean out the burnt sweet potatos from the bottom of the oven)  the pizza cheese is practically black.

But, what may send me over the edge as far as my worthlessness is her latest blog about their Halloween costumes.  My idea of costumes is to dig threw the dress up box and find the two that have the most faded stains and the fewest tears in the fabric and throw them on the girls 5 minutes before trick or treating begins.  Maggie, on the other hand, whips out her sewing machine after heading to the local thrift store for fabric, and SEWS costumes for the entire family, she and Brian included, all coordinating.  I cannot be expected to keep up with this.  I’d like to say it’s because I have 3 kids, but heck, even when I had 2 kids, no wait, even before I had kids, I couldn’t have kept up.  Thank goodness they live in Tahoe.  For a blog of how a good mother and wife operates:
http://tahoebrowders.blogspot.com/

Meanwhile, I’ll just go ahead and confess my latest mishap.  I decided while Camille and Elyse are in school I’d go to the local grocery and get my flu shot.  I have a hard enough time trying to be a mother when i’m healthy, let alone if I were sick.  SO, I head to Safeway.  I realize as pull into the parking lot that the stroller is at home.  No worries, I will just strap Harry in the baby Bjorn.  But as I get Harry out of the car I get a whiff of a situation that is going to require immediate attention.  I head to the bathroom (meanwhile realizing there is no way I’m going to be able to hold Harry who is strapped in the baby bjorn, remove my fleece and get my arm out of my shirt in order to even get the flu shot…so this whole outing is a bust).  Once in the restroom, I riffle though my diaper backpack.  There are probably 7 outfits (trying to over compensate for the last time when I was so ilprepared  that Harry had to ride home in just a diaper).  I rifle for several minutes and then come to the conclusion that there are NO diapers.  7 outfits, but not a diaper to be found.  Well, but wait, there is a cloth diaper, which I go ahead and wrap around poor little Harry, fasten his onesie, pull up his pants and off we go, back to the car to go home.  Forget the flu shot.  I give up.

I don’t exactly know where to begin.  I guess this happens when so much time passes between entries.  How is it the end of Oct. already? 

So, let me back up a bit here…

A couple of weeks ago I met one of the mom’s at Camille’s preschool because her daughter was oohhing and ahhing over Harry.  The following week I ran into her and 2 other moms who were all walking their toddlers while the ”big” kids were in school.  They invited me to join them for their standing Thursday walks.  I was thrilled — FRIENDS!!  Yippie.  We walked the neighborhood of Enatai in Bellevue, where you can buy a “tear down” for a mere $900K.  Needless to say we had some nice scenery.

Later that afternoon both girls had their friends Hannah over (yes, 2 Hannah’s in 1 house).  Camille’s friend and her mom got a little lost on the way (which was nice for me because I got extra time to tidy up) so they arrived late.  Then, the little girl accidently locked herself in the bathroom and spent the majority of her visit hanging out alone in our powder room.  Poor girl though, when she did finally come out Camille wasn’t very good about playing with her because she was playing with the big girls.  The irony here is that the whole reason I had invited the little Hannah over was so that Camille wouldn’t get left out when Elyse was playing with the older Hannah.  Ugh. 

This past weekend we had beautiful weather.   Sunday we went to a park in Seattle where Chris played soccer and the kids and I played at the playground there.   Yet again Harry was my “in” and thanks to him I met a nice young couple and their baby Ely who live in Capitol Hill.  We got to chatting and ended up exchanging emails (couldn’t for the life of me remember my phone number).  She takes a postnatal yoga class with her baby which I would love to do sometime.

At one point the kids and I went and sat to watch Chris play soccer.  We happened to be seated near 3 homeless men chatting about storage.  I couldn’t help but easedrop.  I had spent the ENTIRE weekend sorting through the kids’ endless toys.  They have too much stuff, and so do Chris and I.  We constantly struggle with where to put our STUFF.  SO, here were these guys with no homes having a conversation about the same thing.  The one guy said he had art that he needed to store somewhere and the other guy was offering that he had a closet.  Interesting…I wonder if I were homeless what would be my one thing I’d want to keep.  Probably my photo albums.  Anyway, we are blessed with a beautiful (though not always tidy) home and although we may not have as much as some, we are very fortunate to be where we are.

On a lighter note, the kids and I went out to get Halloween costumes today.  Camille bought wings to add to her costume which originally was a black dress of mine that I had worn to one of Chris’ formal’s, and a witch hat.  She got to the car, tried the wings on, wore them for maybe 5 minutes while we strolled through Target, and then decided they were too big and didn’t want to wear them anymore.  Once home, she changed her mind (now you see why I waited until tonight to buy costumes) and decided to wear a dress up of Elyse’s shown here
Just before bed she advised me that that she was going to wear these wings (above) but with my black formal dress.  We’ll see what she actually ends up with tomorrow for her Pumpkin Parade at school, which will probably be different from what she wears Friday for Halloween.  Elyse is a “Sassy Vapiresse”.  Hmm.  Whatever.  As long as she doesn’t change her mind.

Portland

So this is little Zack, my nephew, at almost 6 months.  He has the most kissable cheeks you ever smooched on.  We had such a nice visit and got to see Auntie Bits’ house for the first time.  Their house is darling, and is in a neighborhood with gorgeous older homes with tons of charm, and ones that are in the process of being rehabed.  We took a walk Sat. morning while the girls colored with uncle Ben.  They have a great huge park a block away and we went Sat. afternoon and then again on Sunday with Ben’s friend Michaela (sp?) and her 2 boys Adam & Aidan who are 3 and almost 6.  Adam is the soccer player and Chris enjoyed kicking it around with him (pictures:  http://picasaweb.google.com/chris.browder/SeptOct#).  Unfortunately the pictures don’t capture the highlight of the weekend because I didn’t bring my camera when we headed to the store to grab some meatballs for a spaghetti dinner.  Here the New Seasons grocery store was having a party with free pumpkins you could color, free baloons, free cake, and samples of ice cream with hot fudge, a mushroom extravaganza (which was really tastey), and gormet cheeses.  We could have enjoyed dinner just walking through the store!  The girls loved it.  We had great weather and it was a relatively easy drive.  Sure beats a long plane ride from Cleveland.

One of those days

Today was Elyse’s Walk-a-Thon for school.  The plan was to get Elyse on the bus, then take Camille to school, and then head over to Elyse’s school (with Harry) for a nice morning of volunteering while Harry took his nap.  I should have known it wasn’t going to be so simple.  The morning was full of small annoyances before I even got out of the door.  We got a Cosco membership (ugh) and so I struggled with my 10 lb. box of Quaker Oats to get a small bowl of oats for Elyse and some oatmeal for Camille.   I rushed out to get Elyse on the bus only to discover I had accidentally left the stroller outside all night so it was covered in dew.  Not good.  No time to shower (what’s new) I throw on some clothes  and leave Harry in his pajamas (day 2) and drop Camille off as fast as I can but am running late because Harry pooped just before it was time to leave.  This of course, makes me late to the Walk-a-thon and there is NO parking so I have to park down the street and walk.  This wouldn’t be nearly so bad if it weren’t for my @#$%^&*() stroller which has decided to punish me by locking the wheels so I can only push it if I lift up the back 2 wheels.  Easy to do with the stroller weighing a ton (not to mention the baby).  I get there late, don’t know where to go, realize after I get down the hill to where the event is taking place that I was supposed to check in at the top of the hill.  I am NOT going back up there with my malfunctioning stroller.  People try to help me to fix the locked wheels but inadvertantly wake Harry up from his nap prematurely.  So, I strap him in the baby bjorn (which makes punching holes in the kids lap cards particularly challenging because I have to lean over and harry wants to help but I nearly punch his finger in the whole punch several times.).   He starts getting fussy so I change him (pooped again).  He needs to eat midway through the walk.  I find a chair in the corner of the gym nearby and nurse him and go back to my hole punching job.  The walk ends 20 min. later and so I joke that I will pay 50 bucks to anyone who can fix my stroller before I have to walk the 10 miles back to my car.  No one can, and I don’t have a lot of time because I have to pick up Camille from school.  Luckily my neighbor offers to hold Harry while I run and get the car.  I get the car but smell more poop so I know I have to change him again before I pick up Camille.  TOTAL BLOW OUT.  I have to take off his outfit which is covered, but somehow discover I have no change of clothes in the diaper bag.  He gets buckled into the carseat with just a diaper.  Luckily I have a blanket to cover him up.  Harry wonders if this is what it takes for me to finally take off his little giraffe pajamas which he has now been wearing for 2 days straight.  Please don’t tell child services.   I race to the driver’s seat and see in my rearview mirror a boy starring  behind my car.  OOPS, almost drove off without that stroller (would serve it right for the way it’s been treating me).  I go to pick up Camille but miss a turn and end up in the Lexus dealership lot.  I make my way somehow back to her school but of course am late AGAIN.  We arrive home and harry is dozing but I can’t let the boy sleep in just a diaper, so I wake him up and you guessed it, he had pooped again!!??  Put him to bed, unload a car full of poopy diapers and the stroller which now is so mad at me it won’t even open at all.  I accidentally make Camille the wrong sandwich (she sweetly eats most of it anyway) and then tell her I am so exhausted I have to got to bed.  I go up to lay down around 1:05 only to remember that it’s early release day which means I have to get Elyse off the bus at 1:30.  No worries, I’ll just take a short cat nap.  Minutes later I hear a knock at the door.  Wait, it’s only 20 after and I barely got to sleep.  I run downstairs only to find a puney package (for Chris– no doubt some piece of technology we DONT need).  I decided to just stay up and wait for Elyse–might as well add missed nap to my day right??  I know I know.  If i woke up earlier and didn’t rush around and was prepared I wouldn’t have days like this.  But who has time to get prepared??

Finally real food

Now that Harry is 5 months he has finally graduated from his liquid diet to real food–well, rice cereal anyway.  He is actually a really good eater (wait, why am I surprised?) and that makes feeding him a real joy.  This cute bib was hand-made by Rebecca Bennett, our friend from Cleveland.  Bits and I are going to introduce Harry & cousin Zach to some fruit when they’re together this weekend.  We’re planning to drive to Portland for a visit.  It will be our first time seeing their house which they bought 2 yrs. ago so we are way overdue!

So Chris and I got to go out again last night.  That’s 2 times in the 2 months we’ve been here.  I think that’s decent considering all we have going on…but maybe my expectations are too low.  Anyway, after calling all 7 people on my list of potential babysitters given by neighbors, we found Juliet, age 14.  She didn’t have a lot of experience with babies, but since Harry usually goes to bed early (6:30 or 7) we figured we could get away with it.  Of course, he changed his schedule on us, and her, and was awake for the majority of her night.  The girls reported that he cried really hard (poor thing, and poor Juliet) but she was a sport.  Her mom (who dropped her off) told me she would come over if she needed help with the baby, but Juliet toughed it out on her own.  Meanwhile, Chris and I had a nice evening at his co-worker’s catered party.  It had fancy appetizers (like bacon wrapped scallops, cucumber salad w/rice wine vinegar, stuffed mushrooms with goad cheese, etc) and adult conversation (both very appreciated).  It was good to finally put faces to names I’ve been hearing since the first discussions of this Seattle job back in April.  They also had lovely wives and hopefully I will be getting together with a couple of them again.

We continue to find boxes that need unpacking.  These are the ones shoved in corners, tucked in closets, under counters, etc.  Ones we didn’t want to deal with initially but now are staring us in the faces looking out of place in our somewhat put together house.  It’s one step forward and a few steps back because a lot of it is stuff we don’t know what to do with.    That seems to be a recurring theme here:)  Chris set up the dvd player, and sorted through tools and misc. stuff in the shed.  Thankless jobs all around.  I organzied our closet, cleaned the house (couldn’t have Juliet thinking we lived in chaos), and sorted through books and papers, coats and clothing, all of which need serious paring down.  I guess we’ll have all winter for those kinds of projects…

Elyse’s Walk-a-thon

Next Wednesday, Elyse’s school is hosting a walkathon to raise money for more than 30 academic, enrichment, and community-building programs that the PTA funds every year.  The kids walk for an hour and a half, and each of them have a goal of raising $60.  SO, if anyone is interested in sponsoring her, please make checks payable to Eastgate Elementary PTA and mail them to me:

15823 SE 48th Dr., Bellevue WA 98006

All donations are supposed to be in by Oct 15th.  Also, please let me know if your employer has a matching donation program.  Thank you in advance for supporting her:)

Harry is 5 months

Today Harry is 5 months.  I don’t want to seem biased, but the kid is cute.  People comment on this almost daily.  What can I say?  I had no part is his looks–just look at pictures of his Browder cousin, Ben
http://tahoebrowders.blogspot.com/2008/10/cousins-brothers.html   In real life, Harry resembles Ben’s picture more than the picture of himself.   They are practically twins, which means that Harry is all Browder.   Therefore, I can say he is cute without it being considered bragging, right? 
Harry’s latest news is that he has mastered rolling over from  his back to his stomach (he has gone from his stomach to his back for months, but he is extremely proud of this new talent).   He is working on sitting up unassisted.  He can do it for a bit, but he’s still pretty unsteady.  He likes to be naked and to lie on his back and hold his toes.  He likes to roll over while I’m trying to change his diaper.  He is extremely lovable.  BUT, it’s a little bit harder to love him at midnight and 3 am when I’d rather be sleeping.

Other notes:
I was checking Camille’s papers from school (Pre-K, I mean).  The firemen came today with their fire trucks and it was a big event.  One of their assignments involved a bunch of pictures and Camille was supposed to circle things it was safe to touch, and put an X through things that were dangerous to touch.  There were pictures of a stove, a banana, a lighter, etc.  She got them all correct, with the exception of one picture, which she neither circled nor put an X through.  It was an iron.  I asked her about it and she said she didn’t know what it was.  I replied “It’s an iron”…Elyse looked at me puzzled and asked “What’s an iron?”  Does anyone else find that hysterical.  Guess I’m not doing enough ironing…of course, in my defense, the movers neglected to move my iron…
Uncle Ben came for a visit this weekend.  Unfortunately the 3 hour drive took him 7 hours.  There was an accident in a construction zone, and it took him 3 1/2 hours to go 11 miles at one point.  Ugh.  Anyway, we celebrated his 37th birthday with cake and unlit candles (the movers wouldn’t move our matches so we had no way to light the candles) and went to the aquarium on Saturday.  The rest of the long weekend was spent coloring.  Ben must have logged at least 10 hours of coloring with the girls.  They were in heaven.  Harry was also in heaven because he got to nap in the morning instead of having to get in the car to take Camille to school.  Mommy was in heaven because she wasn’t riddled with guilt about waking a sleeping baby.  Uncle Ben’s visit was good, for all of us!

Tonight, instead of eating together as a family at the table, we decided to do a “catch as catch can” dinner in front of the Presidential debate.  Chris and I ate L.O.’s in front of the tv and sort of took turns throwing food at the girls.  Later, Camille asked “Was that real lunch? (she meant dinner, but often mixes up the meal names) Because we didn’t even sit down all together at the table like a family!”  I guess we are doing something right, even if we’re not ironing as often as we should.  Here’s a final picture of them in some new duds from Gigi/PopPop

Also, more new pictures can be found by clicking http://picasaweb.google.com/chris.browder/SeptOct#

Top 10 List

OK, having lived in our new house for 10 days, I thought I would do a Top 10 list of things I LOVE about this house. 

1.  Windows!  This house has lots of South facing windows which let in sun (when there is sun) and light.  The entire back of the house including the kitchen is practically one HUGE window.  I love it.  Also it has skylights!

2.  The kitchen!!  It is open to the family room so I can see what the kids are doing and be in the kitchen (eating, not cooking, mind you) at the same time.  This is awesome.  Also, there is so much STORAGE in this kitchen that I have empty spots.  Can you imagine!!??  I have room for things and don’t have to stack bowls inside of bowls!  My mother would kill for this!

3.  The landscaping.  My old house had a nice yard, and some pretty plants, but this yard has LANDSCAPING.  It’s lovely.  I only hope I can learn how to care for it so everything doesn’t die!

4.  It’s Quiet inside.  This may seem like it’s not a big deal, but after the apartment, which had the loudest hallway ever, quiet stairs and a quiet hallway are heaven to my ears.  Not  a creak to be found.

5.  1st floor laundry.  I actually have a room off the family room and kitchen for laundry.  No running down to the basement to throw a load in only then to forget about it for days, leaving it to mildew in the washing machine.  I walk through this room multiple times a day making it fairly easy to remember!  Plus, the washer and dryer seem Enormous!  (maybe just compared to the stacked unit I had at the apartment).

6.  Attached Garage.  One day, maybe next winter, we’ll get the garage cleaned out (did you see the pictures?  yikes) and I’ll be able to park a car in there and in theory, Harry could fall asleep in the car, and I could leave him in there without worrying that someone will call child services on me.  Plus, we could take off our shoes in the garage and enter the house without tripping over a huge pile of shoes.  In theory.

7.  Walkiing.  One of the reasons I liked this neighborhood was that there were tons of residential streets all interconnected without having to cross busy roads.  This is a walkers’ heaven.  I’ll have lots of different routes and even walking trails when I don’t need to push the stroller.  Granted the hills are tough, but maybe I’ll have buns of steel one day.

8.  The bus stop.  We are only 1 house over and across the street from the bus stop.  Yippie.  I can walk down my driveway and watch Elyse get off the bus.  I don’t have to stand and wait or drag the other 2 kids to pick her up.  This is a huge help.

9.  Hard wood floors in the kitchen.  I’ve enjoyed hardwood floors before, but never had them in the kitchen.  They are heaven to sweep and keep clean.  I highly recommend them

ok, #10 you’ll have to wait for because Harry is crying….

OK 10.  Babyproofing!  The previous homeowners did a wonderful job babyproofing all of the kitchen drawers and cabinets.  This is one thing we won’t have to do when Harry starts to explore.  There are a couple of drawers which will be his play tupperware drawers, and everything else will actually stay put!  Also they installed very attractive and sturdy baby gates at the top and bottom of the stairs.  No more mesh netting like we had to use in the old house to prevent the kids from falling through.

Buy From Amazon.com

This is really for Pop-pop (Emily’s dad) but feel free to follow the link and purchase from amazon. I get referral $’s! sorry no discount   Amazon.com