The Original Daughter

Some updates on my first (almost) daughter...

Last week, she got it in her head that she really wants to get her belly button pierced. I don't know exactly the impetus, but I am fairly certain that it is the fault of her temporary pretend Mom (as opposed to her permanent pretend Mom). Smoking Hot Roommate and Big Sis, in a moment of some family infamy, had theirs done together a while back...when SHR was too young to have it done and Big Sis likely twisted some arms to have the piercers ignore that little fact...so, the dots are not hard to connect.

As an aside, Big Sis took hers out a while ago, so she did not have a pierced pregnant belly:-)

So, after asking me if she could get it done (and me saying No), she informed me that she didn't really need my permission...you have to be 18 to get tattoos but not piercings in Massachusetts. Well, turns out that wasn't true, either...she was hoping that, feeling defeated, I would give her permission that I didn't have to:-)

She was mostly kidding, and I doubt she would have done it, but it is still pretty crafty!!!

So, if we add the belly button ring to the several tattoos that she already has planned, she is gonna go and get herself all mangled in the week after she turns 18. Which gives me three years to talk her out of this or hope that she comes to her senses.

As for her summer plans, she is once again totally living the life. She finishes school tomorrow (and then is officially in HIGH SCHOOL!!!) and leaves for Paris on Wednesday evening. She is going all by herself, which is a little scary but totally cute at the same time:-) I was invited to bring the babies to Nice later this summer, and as much as I would love to do that, it seems just a little bit overly ambitious. I could change my mind...

Munchkin's French has actually gotten pretty good for only studying it a short time. She has taken it in school all year, and also bought Rosetta Stone a few months ago. Any time she devotes time and effort to something, she does really well with it, so I shouldn't be surprised...but it is still pretty impressive how well she can converse and read it already. Having someone to practice with probably helps:-)

So she will be gone until a week from Friday (the 4th) and her brother is coming out the next day to take her to the beach and get her moved in for the summer. She has three jobs...the same two from last summer plus an additional babysitting gig...which should keep her super busy. Later on she has a week of soccer camp, and there are still rumblings about her and SHR going to Africa in July for the World Cup...but nothing permanent. I think we will also get a visit from Frenchie at the end of the summer as well.

In other words, Munchkin is totally living the life...

My Nanny moves out tomorrow after my last final, and I will miss her dearly. Not just because she is a huge help, but also because I have just enjoyed having her around. It has been great to get to spend this much time with her, and to have her be such an important part of my daughters' first six weeks of life...they only have one grandmother, so she should get double the Grammy love:-) Which she wholeheartedly deserves!!!

OK...that's all for now...this post already too me three days to write (I had to change the date and time twice!!!). But next time I write, I will be officially on vacation!!!

Still breathing

Just about feeling like I am ready to come up for air...things are about to wind down just a little bit, which should hopefully give me five or ten minutes a day to slow down and breathe!

School is, for all intents and purposes, done. I have a couple nonsense classes today and tomorrow, two exams left, neither of which should be terribly difficult, and then we have to deliver our final presentation for the consulting project that we have been working on all year. To be honest, I feel a little bit removed from it because I haven't done much since March, but I have seen what the guys did to finish it after I left off my part, and it all looks really good. The client company has already seen it and likes it, so it is just a matter of the professors getting their look at it and asking some questions intended to make us uncomfortable;-)

I am pretty happy with myself for sticking the year out. If I had it to do over again, I never would have enrolled during the second semester because it turned out to be a completely asinine idea (seriously...most people that I am in school with spend 12-14 hours a day at school...how did I think I could fit all of that in with twins?) But now that it is over, I am glad that I did. As dumb an idea as it was, I would have hated taking a whole year off and picking it back up in January as a first-year still.

It has been a really incredible experience, even if the whole first year was kind of over-shadowed by the baby thing. The breadth and depth of my classmates' talents is extraordinarily impressive, as are their professional and personal backgrounds. I now know why everyone I asked said that going full-time was such a valuable experience...the stuff you learn in class and the stuff you get out of the books is good, but the real value of the program is being around all of these incredibly smart, incredibly driven people all day long for two years. You can't get that from a different kind of program.

One unusual thing, though, is that I don't feel like I made a ton of "friends". There are tons of people that I like, get along with, work well with and enjoy thoroughly, but very, very few that I would just call up to hang out away from school. I think part of it is that I skipped out on so many of the social activities because I was tired or sick or on bed rest...so I didn't get to know people as personally as many others did. I would count a couple of my group-mates as really good friends (in the sense that we have hung out away from school, I know their wives, etc) and there are at least two other girls that I absolutely adore, but most of the class are more like professional acquaintances.

One of those group-mates, told me on the sly that I am widely viewed as a little bit distant and aloof...which I understand, but which is totally not me. Maybe next year will be a little bit different because I will feel a little more social and a little less...um...pregnant? The truth is that I got married and had twins in the same school year, and that is kind of a lot to manage, so I was maybe not my normal outgoing self all the time. And, as I wrote about a while back, I just sort of felt the need to be a bit guarded all year long. Not totally sure why.

Anyway, school is pretty much done, and I am feeling really good about having finished the year. My grades will be pretty good, although they are entirely irrelevant...you either pass or you don't and no one ever cares about your class rank or GPA or anything like that. I am very, very much looking forward to my summer at the beach with my original baby girl, my new baby girls, my grown up girls and The Boy:-)

I have some more Munchkin stuff for you later on, but that can wait...short version, she remains completely on top of the world (although she still does not have a belly button ring...more on that later.) I also have some stuff related to the old (and future) office, Papa Bear, Boss Foxy and the rest of the gang. Given some of the big changes around here, you can probably guess the basic gist of some of that.

But this is already too long, and I have summer clothes to mentally pick out!

More new additions

Happy to report that Big Sis had an adorable, perfect, 7 lb, 9 oz baby BOY!!! He has Papa Bear's first name and Big Sis's last name as a middle name (which I guess me he is named after Papa Bear:-))

Mommy and Son doing very well, and will be home on Tuesday:-) Many many happy wishes to her and to The Brain Surgeon and to their brand new addition.

Mother's Day

Yesterday was my first "real" Mother's Day, although Munchkin has always sort of celebrated Mother's Day for me in the past. And I had a wonderful day:-)

Smoking Hot Roommate and Big Sis (who is very, very, very pregnant!!!) have a standing date every Mother's Day morning, so Munchkin came over to take me out to breakfast! She also brought me flowers and a card that was super cute and made me a little weepy. The Boy watched the baby girls for a little bit and we had a wonderfully adult visit.

It is the first time in almost a month now that we have been able to sit down just the two of us to talk, and it was a real pleasure. We got all caught up on school and friends and boys and her travel plans and work plans and all sorts of other stuff. That girl seriously has her shit together and she is just a complete joy to be around all the time. And she is a couple of weeks away from being a high schooler...gulp.

We went out to The Boy's parent's house yesterday afternoon because his Mother is very much in line to get my Mother of the Year vote:-) And also to drive her back to our place for the week, as well (from her weekend break from baby duty). We ended up getting her a whole bunch of Mother's Day gifts, which she very much deserves...a bracelet that has two sorta-charms on it with each other girl's names on them (that was from her Granddaughters), and a really beautiful necklace that I may borrow (that was from us) and an iPod (that was from him...long story) and an IOU for some spa time (that was from me).

I am hoping that the two older kids will come and visit sometime soon, because I know there is almost nothing she would like better than to have a girly day of manis and pedis and facials and whatnot with her two daughters (and maybe her three daughter-in-laws:-)). And she will have very much earned the relaxation by the time her stint as live-in-Grandma is over with!!!

In addition to giving her lots of presents, we ate a lot of spaghetti and meatballs. So, all in all, a pretty good Mother's Day! I hope the rest of them are this good:-)

And now, back to waiting on Big Sis to burst!!!

Why Annie Liebowitz Should Dress Everyone

They fixed the water on Tuesday, which was a huge help...living without drinkable water is not really that much fun, as it turns out. No word on exactly how they let a ten foot wide pipe rupture and leave a couple million people in the lurch like that, but I suppose we can get to those details later on. I am just glad we can run the dishwasher again!

If I could make an observation about Bostonians: it was a pretty orderly "crisis". Sure, there were some stories of people getting in fights at grocery stores over bottled water, but they were pretty limited. Mostly, people just kinda complained but went about boiling their own water or buying what they could. The times that I was in stores, I saw people buying a gallon or two at a time and approaching the whole thing pretty reasonably. So, good work, folks...

Now, to totally change subjects...I think I may have finally figured out the attraction of soccer. As I have mentioned, Smoking Hot Roommate and Munchkin are huge fans and watch all the big games (matches?) on TV...and it turns out there is a lot of soccer on TV. Sorry, "football". They have a favorite team and Munchkin has a favorite player and a game jersey to boot.

Me? I never got it. Not that I am a huge sports fan to begin with, but soccer strikes me as even more boring than most of them. And the players are so incredibly over-dramatic...they are like the Soap Opera actors of athletes...

However, something has come to my attention that may be changing my mind a bit, and helping me to appreciate "the beautiful game" a little bit more. I give you...the Vanity Fair World Cup preview. Holy shnikes...can we play the whole event shirtless? Or, even better, just in the little underwear?

Also, according to both The Soup and Chelsea Lately, the white guy on the cover is Kim Kardashian's new boyfriend. And the black guy, I am told, is another member of Munchkin's Favorite Team...

Agua Malo

Good morning, peeps! I am sitting on the couch with a (sort of) sleeping baby on each side of me, enjoying a delicious glass of...

Hold on, question...when did a half Iced Tea, half lemonade become an Arnold Palmer? I feel like I have heard this suddenly like 100 times in the last year or so, but had never heard of it before. Surely, one of you can fill me in on the nominal history of the drink. Also, can someone put a little dash of tequila in this for me?

I almost feel like we are maybe catching our breath just a little bit around here! Every day we do a little bit better with a routine and in getting an understanding of the best kinda schedule for the girls. Obviously, the ideal is for their longest sleep stretches to be at night, and I don't care if they are fidgety and fussy during the day as much.

Since the weather has turned GORGEOUS, we have had them out for walks a couple of days in a row, which is really fun. It is a pretty small window, since they eat about every three hours (and it takes an hour to feed, burp and change them:-)) but they love riding in their car seats. Once they get moving, they fall almost immediately asleep...must be something about the motion. Hopefully we can get them out at least once this afternoon, since it is going to be in the mid 80's today!

Munchkin and Smoking Hot Roommate are at the beach this weekend getting the house opened up and doing some cleaning and stuff. I am super jealous (well, sort of...it is still colder there, but just the idea of it is nice).

I have some good news on that front...I am pretty much going to be there all summer long, which has me oh-so-giddy. Munchkin finishes school the week before Memorial Day, pretty much the same time that I do, and is then going to Paris for a week, and then coming back and moving straight to the beach (yea, the Paris trip came about kind of fast, but all the timing worked well. Also, seriously, how much does she have it made?)

Her brother, sister-in-law and their little girl are coming out to spend the first two weeks of June with her like they did last year, and then The Boy and I are pretty much moving there after that. He is going to work from there about half the time, and will also be on vacation some other times and will probably only have to be away (which really means at home) for a total of two or three weeks out of the rest of the summer.

Let's turn out attention to Big Sis for a minute! She is ready to burst, and is right itching to get that baby out of her belly and into the world! Official due date is in a little over a week, which means that she is on "any minute" watch from here on in. Everyone keep their fingers crossed and send good wishes! I am guessing that it is a boy, but I have no reason to think that, really.

And finally...boil water alert? Not cool guys. Not cool!!! Let's all cross our fingers that we can drink the water again in a couple of days at the longest. Otherwise, the beach house will look even better:-)