I Heart Faces – Self-Portrait
I’ve already posted this picture, but it’s one of the few self-portraits I have, so I thought I’d use it to enter this week’s photo challenge over at I Heart Faces.
That’s me and Miles the shark. And my messy bathroom.
The birthday party
I have lots to blog about, but first things first! The birthday party! It went well, in spite of the fact that the boys were grumpy little monsters for the first half or so. And even though I forgot to put out the cute striped paper straws I bought. Ah well.
Kristina and I spent a lot of time baking, cooking, decorating, etc. Just so you know.
The cupcakes and cake pops!
C is for coooookies!
The party was at our friends’ pizza place, which is an old gas station. They had a tent set up from a Christmas tree sale the weekend prior, which also explains the strange mix of birthday and Christmas decorations.
One of the benefits of having it at Gulf Pizza is the park across the street.
Wait…is that a SMILE?
After some time at the park, but before they smeared frosting all over their faces, I wanted to get their three year picture. You’ve seen how well THAT turned out already…
At least someone smiled…
After that debacle, it was cupcake time! We sang three times, and each boy blew out his candle.
Linus:
Oliver:
Miles didn’t want to wait for his song to be over, though.
“What?”
The boys ate some cake pops, too. The Elmo ones turned out pretty well, but Oscar looked, well, not like Oscar. Oh well, it was fun to make them!
Lots of their friends came, including their birthday buddies, the quads. The girls’ birthday party had been that morning, but I’ll have to post about that later. There was a pony!
After that, it got too dark to take pictures, but just picture the chaos of gift-opening with paper flying everywhere while I desperately tried to keep track of who gave them what. Let’s just say our friends were very generous.
The shirts, which were awesome, were made by my friend Sara. She can make all kinds of shirts. Here’s her blog, you can contact her from there.
12/05/10
The boys, wearing their new birthday shirts again, playing with their newest toys in their extremely organized playroom. Woo hoo!
12/04/10
This pretty much sums up the first half of their birthday party. Ha ha!
(Miles – Linus – Oliver)
12/03/10
Linus, how old are you going to be tomorrow?
12/02/10
My best friend (Kristina, or Kiki to the boys) came down from Virginia today to hang out and help with the boys’ birthday party. I was worried the boys would be standoffish for a bit, but I needn’t have worried. 🙂
It’s especially nice having her here because I am suffering from cripplingly bad sciatica pain and I can barely do much at all. I know George is glad to have an extra pair of hands to help the boys fly around the room.
It’s that time of year…
…the time of year I start reminiscing about the end of my pregnancy.
Let’s see. December 2, 2007. I was done. I had PUPPPPPP (can never remember how many Ps to put in there) and I hadn’t slept well in days. My back hurt, I was swollen, my hands were numb, I was a miserable blob. My BP was creeping up, as was the protein in my urine. I had been in the hospital for a week and I’d read every magazine and watched everything on TV. I was done.
I hit 33 weeks that day, and within the past few days, I’d seen a baby in the nursery who weighed four pounds. She looked pretty big to me, and the boys were estimated to weigh at least that much, so I felt okay doing what I did the next morning…begging my doctor for a c-section.
He agreed, and the operating room was booked for December 4, 2007 at 6:30 am.
A few pictures from my hospital stay…
The inflating leg cuffs and TED hose. Fun! There’s my belly at the bottom of the frame.
Home sweet home for two weeks!
My last “official” belly shot of my pregnancy. (I took one every Sunday)
The night before…dear god, this is horrific.
Man, I was not one of those attractive pregnant women. Ha ha! Good times. I looked so bad that every time I’d go for a follow-up appointment at my MFM’s office, the doctors and nurses would say, “holy cow, you look SO GOOD!”, not because I looked good, but because I’d looked so bad before. Heh.
12/01/10
Linus very carefully opens the first box in the Advent calendar. It was a battle, but the only opened the one. Whew.
11/30/10
I got the boys Advent calendars to start tomorrow. I think the concept was a little over their head (the part where they only get to open ONE window at a time especially) but we’ll see in the morning….
11/29/10
Fun in the bath! I found some old bathtub markers and lo and behold, I was able to get all three boys to sit down in the tub. Whew.
NYC trip recap
George and I took a little trip to NYC for our five year anniversary last week. It was the first time we were both going to be out of town at the same time since the boys were born, so this was a truly momentous occasion! We packed a ton into those three days, so let me get started with the recap, before I forget everything we did.
Sunday
We flew out on Sunday and arrived at Newark at around 1:30. After getting lost only a few times, we found the train into the city. Luckily, our hotel was right by Penn Station, which is where the train took us. Handy! We got to the hotel right at 3, and found our tiny but very nice room up on the 23rd floor. Since I got the room off Priceline, I was afraid we were going to be in a windowless hovel, but it was remarkably nice!
I guess I should have taken a picture before I messed everything up. Oh well. Take my word for it, it was nice.
I didn’t bring my camera with us that night, it was too heavy, so I only have cell phone pictures for the rest of the day. But basically, we walked. We walked across town, we saw Times Square and Bryant Park and Grand Central Station, and finally ended up on 2nd Avenue for dinner at an Irish pub with a couple of friends. I had bangers & mash (yum) and after dinner, we found another bar nearby for more beer. Yum.
After dinner, we walked more. Up to gaze in the windows at Dylan’s Candy Bar, and Tiffany, and Cartier. Down the weird glass elevator to the Apple Store. Into the heart of Times Square. We ended the evening at the midnight showing of Harry Potter. George took the world’s most expensive nap (it was an IMAX show and all) and I enjoyed the film. We made it back to the hotel around 3 am. Party animals!
Monday
First things first, we walked up to the Trader Joe’s on Broadway. Heaven! We got sandwiches and boxes of Dark Chocolate Covered Peppermint Jo-Jos (thank god we don’t live near a Trader Joe’s) and then walked over to Central Park, where we ate our lunch and relaxed on a bench. So relaxing! I wish we could have explored more of Central Park, but alas…
One weird thing we saw while walking that day was the filming of a scene of the show Treme. You know, the show that takes place in New Orleans? And is filmed here? There is a character that lives in NYC, but it’s pretty weird that we came all the way to NYC to see them filming a show about NOLA.
After lunch, we went to the Natural History Museum, and walked around until we were thoroughly museum-ed out.
We took our first subway ride back to the hotel after the museum. Our dogs, they were barking.
We decided to head downtown that evening. We went to a candy shop I had heard about, to a really old bar that George loved and I didn’t, had yummy French fries, had okay pizza, saw Ground Zero, and ended up having an early night to make up for the debauchery of the previous evening.
Tuesday
We rode the Staten Island Ferry, which was relaxing. Saw the Statue of Liberty.
Walked around Chinatown and Little Italy, then found a great bar where we ate fried pickles and drank a pint before walking across the Brooklyn Bridge.
When we got to the other side, we prepared ourselves to stand in a long line at Grimaldi’s for pizza, just as everyone told us to. Luckily, since there were only two of us, we only waited a few minutes. Sweet! We ate our delicious, delicious pizza and went to explore more of Brooklyn. As we were leaving, I spied a mom pushing a triple stroller, and there was that awkward moment between me asking if they were triplets and then telling her WE have triplets. You know, where she thinks we’re one of THOSE people. But thankfully, we were the people who had been there, done that, and therefore we were okay.
Brooklyn was fun. We found a bar that looked promising, so made our way there. But it was just okay. There was a brochure on the table that listed all the businesses on this particular thoroughfare, and I noticed an ENGLISH pub. That’s pretty rare. So we walked a few blocks down and fell in love. We parked our behinds on two barstools and didn’t move for several hours. It was pretty heavenly.
Wednesday
It only occurred to me that morning that we were flying out THE DAY BEFORE THANKSGIVING. Duh. So any time I thought we might have for souvenir shopping disappeared when I realized maybe we should allot some more time to get to the airport. Fortunately and miraculously, there were no lines and we made it to our flight in plenty of time.
And that is the end of our fabulous New York City vacation!
11/28/10
One of my many failed attempts at a Christmas card photo today. Oliver wouldn’t stand up, and Miles and Linus just wanted to jump. And there was that blue trailer back there. At least I ended up getting some decent shots to use. Whew, I don’t want to try that again!
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