3.31.18 - March joy statuses

3.30.18 - Planning our belated honeymoon

When we got married in 2014, Dad offered to send us on a honeymoon as our wedding gift. We decided to delay the trip until after we had children. I think at the time the idea was (1) the trip would be a more meaningful break if it was after we had children and (2) I knew Jack and I were going to start trying to get pregnant right away in summer 2014 so I wasn't drinking. I don't want to go on a honeymoon where I can't drink.

So here we are four years later, and although we may not be done with our childbearing days, we are in a break at least. I'm not pregnant, not about to get pregnant and (hopefully) not still nursing by the end of this summer. Additionally and probably just as importantly, Jack will be done with school but won't yet have the commitment of a nursing job. It's really the perfect moment of physical and professional flexibility to take a quick vacation.

So we decided to take our belated honeymoon this August. Jack originally wanted to go to Europe, but for a trip like that to really be worth the haul I would think it needs to be at least two weeks if not longer, and we don't really have the budget for that, especially accounting for the daily cost of childcare while we're gone. So instead we decided to stay in-country and go to a city known for it's great food. Originally we were trying to choose between Chicago, New Orleans, Portland, and Seattle. After talking it over with more people we had narrowed it to Chicago or Portland and I really couldn't decide. Jack said he could go either way. I did an online poll and got these results:

Portland has the advantage of cheaper plane tickets and hotels, plus neither of us have ever been there before. Chicago has the advantage (or so it seems) of more to do, and I haven't been to Chicago since I was 15 anyway. Plus I get the impression that Chicago feels more "big city" and Portland feels more "laid back west coast town." I was pretty conflicted and, after the poll, leaning toward Portland. But then Jack talked it over with his classmates and they swayed him to Chicago, so that's that.

Anyway, so today I finally booked tickets: mine and Jack's to Chicago, and Don and Merlene's to Sacramento. We did the math, and buying them round trip tickets to come out and watch the girls was actually slightly less expensive than paying Beth to watch the girls the entire time. Plus this way (1) Don and Merlene get some grandparent bonding time and (2) the girls can stay in their own home, which may be less alien to them, I hope.

I also reserved mine and Jack's hotel in Chicago, which is right near the river. Once I knew where we were staying, I was able to spend a long time today incorporating all the sight-seeing and food recommendations people gave us, making a budget, and planning out not an iron clad schedule but at least multiple daily plans (e.g. if we're going to the Museum of Science and Industry we should hit up the best food places in that area the same day). It was so much fun to plan the whole thing out, and when I was done I was still pretty under budget--enough that I may be able to buy a couple cute new tops or something before we go, which I never do.

Jack and I have never taken a trip together except to go see family. We've never taken a vacation just the two of us. I am so excited. Here's the tentative schedule for now, but we'll see how much this changes once we are there:

Thursday

Breakfast: Wildberry Pancakes & Cafe ($$)

Field Museum (& lunch ($$))

Dinner: Malnati's ($$)

Evening: Signature Lounge ($$$)

Friday

Breakfast: The Purple Pig ($$)

Morning: Skydeck Chicago

Lunch: Au Cheval ($$)

Dinner: grocery store ($)

Grant Park Music Festival, 6:30p-8:30p

Saturday

Breakfast: groceries? ($)

Lunch: Cemitas Puebla ($)

L Train - $5

Museum of Science & Industry

Snail Thais Cuisine ($$)

L Train - $5

Sunday

Breakfast: groceries? ($)

Lincoln Park Zoo

Uber - $15

Lunch: Dak ($$)

Uber - $20

The Second City Theater (7pm)

Dinner: 1959 Kitchen & Bar ($$)

Monday

Breakfast: groceries? ($)

Lunch: Al's Beef ($)

Shoreline Architectural Cruise (earliest departs 9:30a, latest 6:15p)

Uber - $15

The Violet Hour ($$$)

Uber - $15

Tuesday

Breakfast: groceries? ($)

Lunch: Devil Dawgs ($)

Adler Planetarium

Dinner: Dine-in movie theater? ($$)

Wednesday

Checkout by noon

3.27.18 - More art I appreciate

Cloud Path - Michael Gregory

Barcaiolo - 

Collage I made Hugo a couple years ago.

3.25.18 - Clara and Jane are spending more time together

I mean they are together all the time, but they are starting to interact more and it's delightful.

Up until recently, Clara pretty much ignored Jane entirely, except to fuss if Jane tried to take or even touched certain of Clara's toys. But over the last few weeks they've started to play together. Specifically Jane will laugh at something Clara does, so Clara will repeat the action, and it often ends with Clara leaning very close to Jane's face while they both giggle at each other. It's very sweet.

Jane doesn't understand kisses.

Sometimes I get a bit nervous because Clara will do something like pat Jane's head kind of hard or try to lay on top of Jane, but Jane is actually only a few pounds smaller than Clara and seems to handle it fine. In fact she usually finds it very funny.

A week or two ago I was giving Clara a bath, and Jane was so interested and excited about it she was trying to crawl over the side into the tub. She was almost lifting herself off the ground, standing on her very tip-toes to try to reach into the tub. So we went ahead and stripped her down and put her in (in her laundry basket) and she was so delighted. She kept clapping together some of the plastic bath toys and making her excited face and giggling. Clara seemed ambivalent to Jane being there but watched curiously. I think that's a good start to sharing a tub.

Up until today I have not tried to have them nap at the same time in the same room. Usually I'll put Clara down for her nap in the nursery and put Jane down in our bedroom. Today Jane wasn't acting tired and I am tired so I decided just to put Jane in her crib in the nursery while Clara was (supposed to be) napping and see what happens. So far the results have been mixed. On the on ehand neither of them is asleep. On the other hand Jane didn't cry for more than a few seconds, and I can hear them in there laughing and babbling to each other, which I love.

I just went in there to check on them and Clara was standing on the side of the crib and Jane was looking at her, and Jane's crib has Clara's blanket, multiple books and stuffed animals, and a whole bunch of the alphabet magnets. I guess Clara was just offering Jane everything, haha.

3.24.18 - Playing together

3.17.18 - St. Patrick's Day

I actually forgot it would be St. Patrick's Day until last night when I saw Google's Doodle for the day.

This is one of those minor holidays that of course can't compare to the Trifecta in the last quarter (Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas), but as a kid I always enjoyed all the holidays quite a lot. I think it might because we made a big deal about them at school, and Mom had decorations for at least some of them at home. Otherwise I remember making our own drawings and decorations to put in the dining room at home for each holiday. And I always enjoyed feeling special and included wearing green on St. Patrick's Day (or dressing up for easter, or wearing red on Valentine's Day, etc.)

Now that I have my own kids the "minor holidays" seem fun again, even though so far they are too young to know what's going on. And even though we probably won't even leave the apartment on this laid back Saturday, I went ahead and dressed them both in some of the only green clothes they had and put on my own greenish cargo pants (which, incidentally, I couldn't wear without an extendor last time I tried them on, and now they fit no problem. Thank you calorie counting!)

Clara reads along to One Fish, Two Fish.

Jane snuggles her blanket.

I had no plans beyond that but I did bake some blueberry muffins today including a lot of zucchini and real bluberries, which made the batter look dark green. We'll pretend that was for St. Patrick's Day. And it was really a joy turning on the oven light and watching Clara get excited about the muffins baking. She put her nose up to the window and said "Oh wow! So muffin!" and she kept knocking on the oven door, haha.

When the first batch was done, I fed some pieces to Janey in her high chair and Clara squooshed next to me on the kitchen chair I was sitting on and remarked "Two? Two muffins!" meaning one for her and one for me. She seemed to get a kick out of that. So all three of us shared a moment wearing our green clothes and eating our slightly green freshly baked muffins, and it was pretty nice.

Finally, here is my post on FB for the day:

I've been trying to get Clara to take a nap for like an hour, and once or twice I've heard her sitting at the nursery door knocking. I open the door and say "Clara Lynn, go lay down," and she jumps up and runs and gets in her bed. Wait long enough and the process repeats. Just now I went to do the same, but instead of opening the door I just said through it "Clara Lynn, go lay down." I could hear she didn't move, so I said it again and still heard nothing. So I opened the door to make her go lay down, only to realize she is asleep at the foot of the door, haha. Guess that's where her nap is happening today.

3.15.18 - Laughing with toddlers

It's also laughing at something and your baby laughs too even though she doesn't know what you're laughing at. That happened to me tonight as I was giggling at this video. Jane just kept looking at me and laughing.

Also, tonight Clara sat in front of the washer and took each alphabet magnet off, one at a time, sang a song about it, and then tossed it into the hallway. Jane sat right next to her absent-mindedly playing with the toy mouse, and each time Clara threw a magnet into the hallway, Jane would laugh hysterically. AND it gave me time to clean up the living room uninterrupted, while listening to my daughters sing, laugh, and enjoy each other. Very sweet.

3.14.18 - Happy Pi Day!

3.13.18 - Mom's visit

Mom went back home today. As is often the case I don't have a lot of time to write a whole post about the trip, but it was really enjoyable (and fast) and I want to remember in particular:

1) Mom makes me feel absolutely hilarious because she laughs so easily.
2) I love how she takes pictures and videos of everything. I really like everything to be chronicled and it's nice not to be the only person doing so, and it's also nice to be in the pics and videos with my kids.

It was great to get to see her spend so much time with the girls, and they seemed to really enjoy it too, especially Clara. Very sweet time.

3.12.18 - noms

3.10.18 - Clara's 3rd Birthday Party

First of all, the day started off wonderful because we got Clara's tTG-IgG results back and she is in normal range for the first time since her Celiac diagnosis. So I was elated about that.

The girls woke up happy and for a little while, Clara, Jane, and I hung out on Clara's bed. Clara pointed to one stuffed animal at a time and said, for example, "Gray Mouse sleep?" Then I would tuck Gray Mouse under the Marauder's Map blanket next to Clara and we'd pretend he was snoring, and then she'd ask for another. At the peak she had Gray Mouse, Cat, her sippy cup, Elephant, and Bobo all tucked in to "sleep" with her.

Jane kept trying to grab the sippy cup and other animals even if I gave her different toys to play with. She and Clara often are most interested in the specific toy the other is playing with, haha.

Jack and I got the girls dressed in their matching "Happy Birthday" shirts that (I believe) Beth had bought for them. I was hoping Jane would take her "I've been up for an hour and now need a morning nap" nap on time so she would wake up on time and we could get to the train museum (technically the Northern California Railroad Museum) early. But Jane didn't want to go to sleep. Eventually I let her cry it out and after about five minutes she passed out. 

By then Mom had arrived and she and Clara and I visited. Clara ate Cocoa Pebbles (and got them everywhere) and we listened to Spotify and I tried to clean up the apartment more in anticipation of Renata coming to visit later in the afternoon. 

Clara just hanging out in the laundry basket while we cleaned up.

Jane slept longer than she typically does in the morning, and I actually went in and woke her up near 11am. I fed her one more time and then we all got ready to leave for thet rain museum. I put on Clara's shoes and coat before the rest of us were completely ready, which means she stood as close as possible to the front door holding her blanket and sippy cup and continually looking over her shoulder wondering why we weren't leaving yet. It was pretty cute.

It didn't take us long to get to old town Sacramento, and Mom paid the $10 for parking so we wouldn't have to worry about leaving the museum to feed the meter or move the car. We brought the double stroller with us. I love that thing. Clara can see just fine from the front seat and it makes it a lot easier to move the girls around. 

There is a decent sized train in the lobby when you first walk in and wait to buy tickets. Certainly the train is vastly bigger than any toy train we have, and Clara was pretty interested in it. I didn't realize, though, how humongous the trains are in the actual museum. The first room you walk into has a very high ceiling nad is designed to look like a mountain area. Clara was pretty impressed with the huge black engine--and when I learned the engine was one of the originals from the first California railroads, I was pretty impressed too. 

We walked past several large trains until we got to the part of the museum where you can actually go up into the cars and look outside. We checked out a mail car and a car from the "bullet train" from the 1960s. We also looked at the inside of (I think) an oil engine, which had a flickering orange light where the fire box would be. Clara was very interested in that. 

Sitting together on the Bullet Train.

There was one train that had a row of telephones receivers hooked up next to it; you could pick them up and listen to a recording of the information about the train. I think that's the first time in Clara's life she's seen an old school telephone headset (as opposed to cell phones). She tested it out but if she put her ear to the earpiece, the mouthpiece was too far from her face, and vice versa. She kept moving her face back and forth to try to fit it to the phone, haha.

Once we had finished exploring the ground floor we realized our map said the third floor has a whole kids section. That was easily the best part of the museum. There was a beautiful and elaborate trainset with at least four trains running in different directions on different levels. It had several bridges and tunnels and a hot air balloon. Clara stared at it for a very long time, which was fine with me because I enjoyed checking out all the detail. It reminded me of Grandpa Benoist and I thought about how much he would have enjoyed that set and this museum trip with us. <3

Clara was reluctant to leave the set until she saw all of the kids train sets (set up at kid-height tables) in the next part of the museum. There was also an electric Thomas the train running on a relatively small track that had a big plastic bubble in its center. Kids could crawl under the table and stand up in the bubble to watch the train run around them. Clara loved that too. 

After she watched the Thomas train for a quite a while she emerged and played with the toy (Brio) train sets too.

By now we had been at the museum about two hours and I was tired and I could tell both girls were tired. We packed them up to head home. On the way out we stopped by the gift store and got a penny pressed as a souveneir. We let Clara hold it as we went back to the car.

It wasn't five minutes after buckling the girls in that they both passed out on the way home. And, amazingly, they stayed asleep as we moved them into the apartment: Clara slept in her jacket on her bed, and Jane slept in the carseat in our room, both for over an hour.

During that quiet time Mom baked the gluten free birthday cake and I went through a bunch of my photos for Facebook. Renata texted to say she was running a bit late, which actually works out fine because it gave the girls more quiet time to nap. Jane finally woke up and I nursed her, and then Clara woke up and had time to recover from napping all before Renata got there.

Renata and her dog Mia arrived just as we were putting candles in the cake. Renata had brought another present as well as a mylar balloon that said "Happy Birthday!" Clara was overwhelmed with excitedment to suddenly have a balloon and a dog in the apartment. Jane was also fascinated by Mia.

We sang Happy Birthday but kind of softly and mostly to the cake, as opposed to Clara, so she wouldn't feel put on the spot. (Last year during my birthday I held Clara in my lap while just Erin, Rachel, and Jack sang Happy Birthday, and Clara still cried. Too much pressure, I guess.) Clara didn't understand blowing out the candles so I did it for her. Then she asked to do it again...and again watched as I did it for her, haha. But she certainly understood getting to eat cake and was happy to do it. So was Jane.

Clara still doesn't really get presents. She knows what they're called but she hasn't made the connection that (1) she is allowed to rip the wrapping paper off and (2) there's usually something pretty fun and exciting inside. She was more interested in playing with each gift after she opened it than in moving onto the next gift, but that's actually kind of nice. We opened about half the gifts and then let her play with them for a while before opening the rest. Beth got her a Minnie Mouse that has snap on dresses and shoes, and Clara was pretty interested in that. She was also happy to stack her new ASL ABC blocks from Jama. Don & Merlene got her a Brio trainset, and Jack set it up on the coffee table. Clara was very into it. But the prize toy, for sure, was the electric trainset Renata brought. Jack set that one oup on the kitchen table (it just fit) and Clara sat and watched it go round for quite a while. At one point I grabbed a few finger puppets from the bath toys and put them in one of the train cars, and Clara gave an excited "Oh ho ho!" Adorable. 

Jack went out and bought food to make a green salad and bake some gluten free pizza, and we all had dinner together. It was great visiting with Renata. She has just last week moved back to the bay area to try a new (challenging) job, and she's nervous, but I am really happy to have her closer by again. I hope she manages to visit semi-regularly, that would be great. While we talked Jane and Clara kept wandering after Mia, who wasn't too sure how she felt about all the attention. Once we had Jane in her high seat and Clara eating pizza, though, (which she loved) Mia did better. She's a pretty sweet dog. Pretty quiet.

Suddenly I realized it was 8:30 based on how much Jane was rubbing her eyes. I have to say Jane was great the entire day--never very fussy, just along for the ride. I went and nursed her down and she passed out in our bed. Renata and Mia headed out, Mom changed Clara into pajamas, and we all hung out a bit longer and visited and cleaned up somewhat. When I went to put Clara to bed she gave me a very long hug, and I rocked her back and forth and thought about how I can't believe it's already been three years since she was born, and how it will be a blink of an eye before she's 13 and then 23. It's bittersweet to think of, but it was wonderful to realize for now she's still my little toddler that I can hold in my arms and cuddle. I love her so much.

So yeah, it was a pretty great birthday.

3.10.18 - Clara's TTG IgG markers

3.10.18 - Kid Snippets

On 3/9/18 Clara was going through all her bingo picture cards and singing a made up alphabet song in the form of "[Letter] is for [noun]" such as "Z is for Zebra." At first I thought she knew the beginning letters of each word because she had heard some of them in other alphabet songs (Z is for Zebra and F is for Fish are pretty common). Then I realized she was also getting the correct first letter for words that I'm pretty sure she hasn't heard sung elsewhere, such as T is for Tree. I watched her more closely and realized she was picking up each card and looking at the word on the back (all in lower case letters) to figure out which letter each word started with! I was really impressed at her cleverness. What a smartie.

Very early this morning (3/10/18) I brought Jane into our bed to nurse. I was nursing her from my right side, meaning it was Jane, then me, then Jack in bed. He spooned me and she rested an arm across my chest while she fed, and it was just a very cuddly family. By the time Jane finished nursing and passed back out, I actually felt pretty awake, but I decided to just lie there and enjoy both of their cuddles for a quiet moment, and it was pretty nice.

Clara has realized that there are more books (the non-board "big kid" books) on the bookshelf in the living room. Now she regularly goes to the bookshelf, examines the options, and pulls a variety of books out to read. This is delightful because for a long time she wanted to read only the same 2-3 board books, and now she has moved on not only from those particular books but from board books in general. The shelf with the "big kid" books is just at her height so she can easily look them over and pull a book off the shelf. Even as I type this she is turning the pages to "One Fish, Two Fish" as she listens to a reading of it off Youtube. I really love how much she loves books.

In the last few weeks Jane and Clara have gotten a lot more interactive. This morning (3/17/18) Jane woke up about an hour and a half before Clara. I kept Jane busy mostly by holding her in my lap and handing her toys while I worked on my laptop, but it still required a lot of attention and she would get bored easily. When Clara woke up, I brought Jane into the nursery and she was so happy to see Clara awake. I put her on Clara's bed and she waved her arms up and down and made excited coos and then crawled toward and sort of onto Clara. I could tell Clara wasn't sure how to feel about it. She was kind of smiling but also pulling away. But overall she seemed happy to see Jane too. Then they both played in the nursery (separately from but near each other) for probably more than half an hour. Jane was perfectly content to entertain herself as long as Clara was also nearby. So adorable (and helpful!) I hope they grow to mostly enjoy each other's company and be good friends.

3.8.18 - Jack's cooking

3.3.18 - Happy Birthday, Clara!

My big 3-year-old over the years. Such a little love.

Clara's third year.