'Tis the Season...

...for pumpkin pictures! My friend Laura came down for a visit with Taylor and Bo, so we spent a couple hours catching up and playing around the house and then headed out to our favorite patch. It's really more like a "Pumpkin Amusement Park-meets-Dairy Farm" so the kids had a BLAST. Of course, I had just as much fun watching Millie and Si interact with their friends and explore the farm. Not to mention how great it was to be with Laura again. What a perfect fall day!

All the kids in a wagon. Seemed like a good idea...

...until it all went wrong. Si's screaming for rescue; Bo's contemplating a dare devil leap to the next wagon; Persnickety Millie is brushing hay off Bo; Dignified Taylor is just above all this nonsense

Atop the hay pyramid

Entangled in the hay maze

Hay ride!

"OH!"

This is Laura's photo and I think it's just hysterical. The three big kids LOVED 'sledding' down the hill of cotton seed. It was fluffy and soft and just the right speed.

The sweet girls dancing to questionable "Kidz Bop" Avril Lavigne tunes. An interesting note about the divvying up of dancing costumes: Taylor is modeling the dress/wings/headband look while Mils is wearing the red dancing hat & shoes combo. Both are equally desirable to her. Funny.

Update: Our Little Fashion Model

Remember a few weeks ago when we trekked up to LA for a fun little photo shoot for TOMS? Today they launched their new line of youth shoes. Check out their home page!

Millie's Friends

I must say, Millie has the most awesome taste in friends. She knows to target the kids with really GREAT parents. For example, I think I enjoy my time with Katherine almost as much as Millie and Anna love being together. Last week we all hit our favorite pumpkin patch one day and then a neighborhood block party the next. Millie even dug up the courage to climb into her very first bounce-house thingy!

Regular Stuff

On the Ferris wheel at the Santa Monica Pier.

So what's new? Hmm. Christopher made it home safely from Guam (bearing awesome gifts) and we made it safely through the week without him. Millie is still loving preschool. Last week her teacher told me that she was the "master of the class". I think this is a positive thing since she said it with a smile (I was/am a bit 'bossy', so this trait in her can go either way). Apparently Mils' is compassionate (likes to console her classmates who get sad when their parent leaves) and is a strong turn-taker (often preschoolers and toddlers can't yet comprehend the concept of sharing, so we work on taking turns with toys instead). She's completely potty trained during the day and is dealing with the new rule that she can only have her blanket and suck her thumb if she's in her bed. Sometimes she tries to trick me by asking if she can sleep in the car...apparently I turn a blind eye to the thumb sucking when she zonks out in the car seat!

This outfit started out pretty normal. However, she remembered her friend Taylor greeting her at the door in a floor length white dress-up gown and was inspired to dig up her own white dress. There's no explanation for the boots. Or for the hair, really. Just crazy.

Simon is a million miles a minute. Seriously, he's really hard to catch when he gets his crawl up to full speed. No, he's not walking yet. But no, I'm not panicked about it either. He's free-standing all the time so I know we're on the right track. I finally got sick of him dragging his dinner through his hair, so the other night I took some scissors to his wings. I don't think I envisioned his first haircut being on top of the picnic table on the back porch of my friend's house in the last slivers of daylight, but I just couldn't take another evening of scrubbing marinara out of the wisps.

Good shot of the hair butchery...I mean cut.

Oh please ignore the basket of doom in the background. It's my catch-all for things that need to go back into the kids' room. Maybe I should stop blogging and start dealing with that basket. Anyway, a good shot of the free-standing.

He LOVES books. To be specific, he loves five books: DOGS, Puppies, Pets, Baby Animals, and Millie Moo. He also insists on holding a book while riding in the car. He loves trucks and cars and scooting them around the house (Mils never did this, so it's fun that he discovered this play all on his own). We take a music class together on Thursday mornings and my heart nearly explodes with the happiness of having time for just the two of us. I got a little emotional during the first class -- I felt like I was discovering a whole new side of this amazing boy. I think he realizes we've got something special going on, too.

It's HOT here, still. I'm eyeing my fleece longingly and imagining the kids' in long sleeves and pants soon. We've got a crazy, busy month ahead: my big girl will turn three years old! plus lots of other adventures. Fun.

The gang just before Christopher's triathlon in Malibu a few weekends ago. It's about 6:30am. Si's lookin' real happy.

Christopher heading for the finish line. He set a personal best time! The water was SUPER rough (he still swam fast) and he ran the fastest 10K of his life at the end. We are so proud of him.

While Daddy's Away...

...we're trying to laugh through these very long days! Christopher left for Guam yesterday so I've tried to keep our mornings full of fun activities. A few shots of what we've been up to:

Hanging and playing with Brynn (and her parents Jill & Brent)

A visit to Scripps Aquarium yesterday. Seemed like a great idea until BOTH kids decided to be afraid of the darkened rooms and glowing fish tanks. Ugh.

I walked into the kids' room to get them up from naps yesterday and WOW...it was stinky in there. When I started asking around about the source of the stink, here's what Simon had to say for himself...

I asked him if he pooped and he just looked at me and then lifted up his shirt to show me where I could find it. Ummm...awesome. Kid can't say mommy yet, but he has a very full non-verbal vocabulary!

And while we're on the subject of funny vocabularies, today during lunch Millie told me that Si had a " 'roni tattoo". WHAT? What are you talking about? Sure enough, I looked over at Simon and somehow he had a macaroni plastered to his bicep. Lots of questions here: How did that macaroni get there? Why is a tattoo the first thing Millie thinks of when something is plastered to someones arm?

We are all missing Christopher like crazy and really appreciating everything he does for this family. Counting the days until he returns...

Preschool!

And she's off! Millie hit preschool running and so far really loves it. Here are some shots from her first day.

She picked out her own outfit!

Millie's new backpack and school bus hair clip from Yammy & Poppa.

Daddy & Mils outside of the school.

Her new friend (also named Amelia). Millie grabbed her hand and they headed out to the playground. A quick hug and a kiss and away she went...

Farewell Summer

We've been aching for a little family getaway during these last weeks of summer, so we packed up the traveling circus and headed to Palm Springs. I know it sounds like a dream huh? 115 degrees in the dead of August...delightful. But thanks to my first-ever priceline.com transaction, we got a steal of a deal on an unbelievable resort. We swam in the pools all day long and took breaks for movies, naps and air conditioning. My sister even drove over from LA to join us for a bit. What a great summer send-off and family kick-off to the next big season in our lives. Next up: preschool!

Toddlers and Tiaras

Once again, Jules hooks us up with the coolest opportunity. File this one under "what I will do for some cute shoes!" The company she works for in Santa Monica, TOMS, makes and sells shoes for the sole purpose (get it...'sole'?) of giving away hundreds of thousands of shoes to underprivileged children around the world. For every pair of shoes TOMS sells, they give away a pair to a child in need. A while back Julie spent a week putting shoes on kids in South Africa and was hooked. She's now living her dream job, and I'm just so proud of her.


So a few weeks ago we got the call that Millie was chosen to be one of the models for the company's new "Tiny TOMS" line. Since she wears TOMS shoes pretty much nonstop, I figured this would be a fun and easy adventure. What I didn't know was that the other three kids in the photo shoot were 'pros'. This came to light when I signed a form allowing TOMS to release photos to me for Millie's portfolio. If by 'portfolio' they meant the basket of photo albums under the coffee table, then sure...we'll take 'em! Next, one of the other moms asked me how often Millie 'worked'. Ummm. Well. Not often. She's 2. Anyway, I was extra thankful that Millie was SOOO well behaved and cooperative since she was the amateur of the bunch.

After a few days of discussions about the appropriateness of skinny jeans for 2 year olds (I still don't know if they are right or wrong, but they were pretty cute on her so we just went with it), we loaded her up with a sugar-filled orange juice box and set her loose. She was her adorable self -- engaging with the other kids, polite with the TOMS staff, accepting of the camera in her face and at her feet, and just a great kid.

To complete the star studded day, we met both the founder of TOMS and all three members of Hansen (yes, the Mmm-Bop Hansens) while we were at the HQ. Who knows how or if any of these photos will turn out, but we can chalk it up to a super-fun LA day. And if it does happen to work, you might be seeing Mils' little tootsies all over the place!

Kid-sized staging area. Check out the wardrobe and snack table stocked with goldfish and grapes!

Si is looking pretty sporty in his own TOMS.

I'm Getting Big!

Wow. This is one amazing boy. Here we are at the swings last week. He's so big...so fun!

...And Even MORE Cousins!

A couple of weeks ago all the stars aligned and we were able to reunite with the Wells family. Matthew and Christopher are cousins and Jen and I married into the family the same year. She's from SoCal so we jumped on the opportunity of her visit home to the LA area to get all our kids together for some lunch, playin', and swimmin'. Man, Millie had fun. Jadyn and Ella are older than she is, so she loved following them around and imitating their every move. Jadyn is the most helpful almost-7 year old I know (she managed to get Millie fully dressed after swimming and carried Si around the house for me) and Ella has so much spirit. Wyatt and Simon are just a few months apart, so they mainly crawled around and stared at each other.


It was a special time to reconnect with Jen, now that we're both moms. Matthew is a college football coach so they move more often than we do, and Jen is simply inspiring in her positive attitude towards the constant change. And I loved seeing Jen's mom, Karen, again. She has always been so loving and encouraging with me.

Here are some shots of the fun afternoon: