What Happens When Nana is Away...(Video)

My mom is visiting family back East. We miss her. :)

P.S. If you've subscribed to the blog email, click on the blue title in the email you get. It's a link that will take you to the video.

The Recital

A Prep Course for Clown School

I always wished I could be one of those girls who never had to wear a stitch of make up; to wake up lovely and have perfect skin and toss my hair up in some pony tail-thing and look fabulous. No such luck. So as much as I hate to admit it to myself, my daughter, who of course will mimic anything I do, has taken great interest in my make up drawer. She happily squirts lotion on her hands, puts smudges of eye make up on her cheeks and paints her lips happy with pink lip gunk. Her lovely little face and perfect skin (framed by her matted, uncombed hair) disappear behind her clown mask of make-up. It's too funny to discourage, and lucky for me, when she's done she goes back to playing with her trains, destroying towers she's built, or reading books she's pulled out from every shelf in the room. Maybe there's hope for make-up less future yet!

A Lost Post...A Lesson Learned.

During the last month of school, I had my second graders do the age-old Plant Seeds in a Milk Carton science project. While this might not seem like a big task, it takes monumental amounts of organization and patience (at least for me) to get 28 overly-excited- end-of -the- school- year- eight year olds to collect and prepare milk cartons and then to add dirt and seeds into the equation without some major catastrophe occurring. But we prevailed. Over the course of two weeks (because I only teach on Fridays) my students learned about the life cycles of plants, fashioned planters out of milk cartons saved from lunch, filled them with soil, noted some observations in their science journals, planted snap pea seeds and watered their precious projects. We carefully labeled each carton with their names and then placed them in a tray so I could bring them home to care for them over the coming week.

Mark picked me up after school and home we went carrying 84 snap pea seedlings (3 to a carton) and the hopes and dreams of 28 second graders and their bouncing baby snap pea plants on my shoulders. Once home, I carefully placed the tray in the sunshine on top of an overturned gardening pot, and then went about my business. Mark started work in the backyard, Isabella was happily playing outside and I retreated to the office to check my email.

At some point some point I noticed that it was quiet. Too quiet. Isabella-quiet, so I got up to investigate. I opened our screen door to go out to the side yard where Isabella was playing and this is what I saw:

19 of the 28 milk carton snap pea planters had been removed from the tray and exploded on our sidewalk. I was so shocked I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Isabella noticed my alarm and cheerfully declared: "Look Mama! I made dirt parties!" Oh, yes you did, little 3 year old darling of mine. I salvaged what I could, replanted a few new seeds and hoped for the best.

Parenting lesson #362: Always, ALWAYS, tell your 3 year old what they can and cannot touch.

Discovery Kingdom

Isabella and Allie at Discovery Kingdom. I'm the mom that makes her kid wear the big floppy hat(that obstructs all view) to the amusement/marine park.
Riding the train.
My friend Karly made this trip possible. They had a visitor's pass and was gracious enough to invite us to come along for the day.
Penguins!
Big chairs!
Merry-go-round!
The whale show featuring Shouka!
Whale? What whale? This one was way passed her nap time and dancing in the bleachers too much to notice some whale doing tricks.
Late afternoon giraffe feeding, er, or more like late afternoon toddler feeding. The turkey sandwiches with cheese and cheetos were way more popular than watching the giraffes eat leaves off the trees.

April Events

The best grandparents. Ever. Trying to convince Isabella that bike helmets are "cool". Mission accomplished.
The Birthday Girl. Isabella turns 3! The poor babes was sick the whole weekend with a fever. She perked up a few times though--enough to play with her trains and blow out the candles on her cake (vanilla cake with pink frosting and sprinkles, as per her request)

Her new dress up clothes came in handy when it was time to make meatballs. Chef in training.


A visit from a dear friend. My former roommate (when we lived in NYC) Angela came North for a few days to visit. It was sooooo good to see her. She even endured a play date with many loud toddlers and a cupcake bar. That's true friendship.

At some point during the play date it was brought to my attention that the cup containing the sprinkles (for cupcake decoration) had disappeared from the table. Upon investigation, said sprinkle cup was discovered, mostly empty, hidden out of sight behind a wall, surrounded by three suspects: Isabella (birthday girl), Ira (birthday boy-and possibly an innocent bystander. Because Ira is so sweet and would never...) and Allie (accomplice). When questioned about who took the cup from the table, Isabella piped, "Allie!" and when questioned further about who was the mastermind behind the sprinkle stealing plot, Isabella cheerfully admitted, "Me!" Boy do I love this kid.
Mom's birthday came a week later. We joined them and the Stiefvaters at Casa Accampo in Mill Valley for dinner.
Isabella thought it'd be fun to put the Italian Meringue Buttercream frosting on her nose--and everybody else's.
Annie and Isabella having a chat.
Isabella's first salon hair cut (and by "salon" I mean Great Clips--think Supercuts)The lady cut my hair simultaneously to show Isabella what getting a hair cut was all about.
I'm not exactly sure what she did to my hair, but Isabella's new bob looked pretty cute.
After being slept on, the Next Day Hair wasn't as cute, but the facial expression had to make the blog.

In like a lion, out like a lion

March = Rain.
This is the creek across the pasture from our house.
Mark brought the red Radio Flyer (plastic) wagon down to the creek for some fun. He thought it'd be a great idea to hurl the thing down the "rapids" of the creek. (I find it amusing when grown men suddenly come up with ideas that they probably thought of when they were ten). I was game. And since I was wearing Mark's rubber boots, I got to be the one to launch the craft. It was all fun and games until the horse, Princess, noticed a red flying object hurdling towards her and got spooked. Game over.