Top 15 Moments from a 3-Week Road Trip

15. Spending an afternoon being useful to my blind Grandma
14. Making my 4-month-old nephew, Noah, smile
13. Eating pizza on the sand during sunset at Seaport Village, San Diego

12. Requesting songs from the mariachi band with Aunt Grace
11. Introducing the kids to ballpark wieners at the

Padres game on Fourth of July
10. Watching Grayson hit a single on the Petco kid's field
9. Laughing at Lucie's "Ooooo!" every morning when she re-saw the fountain in the hotel lobby
8. Sitting in the hot sand at Hotel del Coronado while the kids played on the rocks
7. Grayson's "YES!" after going on nearly all of the fast water

slides at Knott's Soak City
6. Drip castles at La Jolla
5. Pina coladas delivered poolside in Palm Springs
4. Lucie keeping the pool deck clear of all those pesky flip-flops (and cluttering up the pool with a sea of floating shoes)
3. Rob and Grayson winning the "Fastest Slide" competition
2. Afternoon naps
1. Lucie's ruffled bikini-clad bottom

Comments

Motherhood - Not for the faint of heart

My picture of hell: one soggy rainy day, two healthy energetic children, three solid days of DVDs, one dog that needs to pee but refuses to get wet, and me. Alone with the carnage and contracted to get 4 hours of work done. And just to frost the cake, Lucie can take off her pooy diaper now, which delights us all, but especially the dog, to no end. These days it is sort of a toss up for who has left the pile on the carpet. Lucie? Dog? The fact that it landed on top of a princess high heel is good indication the culprit was of the two-legged, shoe-loving, Oreo-eating variety, which makes it only slightly less disgusting to remove behind a 28-ply Kleenex. Pray for sunshine.

Lucie and the Problem of Evil

Lucie has suddenly started questioning things. And by things, I mean eternal things. It all started when she asked if I would read her a bedtime story from the Bible storybook. The book opens innocently enough with the story of creation. There are lions and tigers and bears, and naked people being created from dust. (At this point in the story you’d think questions would arise, but no, kids just seem to go along with it at face value. Which is exactly the reason I've had to work so hard to convince Lucie that turtleneck shirts are not actually made from the necks of turtles.) Anyways ... "Do you know why Adam and Eve are sad?" I asked, pointing at the picture of them sorrowfully leaving the garden. "I sure do, " Lucie assured me. "They are sad because they don't have any parents." Impressive, huh? Clearly, she’d been processing and following along. "Well there is that," I prodded her, "and also they have to leave the ...

Say This!

Picture by Grayson (our 9 year-old) Last week we reached another one of those parenting milestones. At 27+ months of age, Violet said her first real words: "Mama! Me go!" Three little words so beautiful, so stunning and unexpected, they stopped me in my tracks. Even the other kids dropped their activities and ran out to verify that, yes, Violet had spoken. We hugged and touch-down-danced and, of course, Violet got to "go." When you have a child who is the tiniest bit developmentally delayed, small accomplishments are met with big celebration. Lucie insists on accompanying me on simple errands? I need to figure out a way to sneak out the door more efficiently; Violet suddenly says that she wants to go? Hot dog! Get the video camera and your shoes on kiddo! Therapists have been coming to the house since the first week of January, evaluating Violet's delays. At her last check in, she had about 15 simple words in her vocabulary -- about 100 words u...

Montecito Mama

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