Flashback Fotos.

That's me.

It was the summer of 1983.

I had just turned four...
...had some sweet wheels...
...a great haircut...
...a GOLD necklace...
...a PINK basket on my pink tricycle which was artfully parked in the ground cover of the backyard for these glamor shots...

I'd say I was pretty much livin' the dream.


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Christmas card season... and a Friends and Family discount to Paper Culture

Not the card, but it was a runner-up.

I like picture-Christmas cards.
I can't help it, I just do.
Some people think they're pretentious and dumb. Not me. I love seeing how children grow. How cute pets are.
I'm nosy.
I like it.

That said, it's time to order the 2011 Christmas card and it's kind of exciting this year since the number of children in our family has doubled... to two. (Tee hee.)  And I am ordering them tomorrow from Paper Culture

And... I'm getting 30% off with a friends and family discount. Interested? Read.On.

I love this company. They are eco-friendly and plant a tree with EVERY order and they have a mailing/addressing service that just charges you the cost of the stamp. (This is perfect when you live out of the country... or if you don't have the time to stamp your own cards.) And, they have cool designs. And their paper weight/quality is fantastic.

We ordered Vivienne's birth announcements from Paper Culture... and I loved them.

 ...and I got to meet the Paper Culture peeps when I went to BlogHer and they were just as cool in person as their website may lead you to believe. (Full Disclosure: No, I'm not getting paid or compensated for this post. I just like the product.)

SO, if you're interested: get 30% off of anything in the store with this Friend & Family code: FF30HOL. It's live at 12:01 a.m. PST on Wednesday 11/30 and will be valid until Friday 12/2. You've got two days, friends.

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So I spent this past weekend attempting several "photo shoots" with the ladies. It was dificil.

Is one looking at the camera? Well, that means the other one isn't.
Is one sitting still? Then that means the other one is running/crawling away.
Is one smiling? Then obviously the other one is crying.

Catch my drift?

And here are some outtakes.

Vivienne wouldn't put down the infant motrin.

Oh, I wish Lila's eyes were open.

Crying on the left. Motrin in hand on the right.

She crashed.

Is that a choke-hold or a really, really strong hug?

This is what happens when you take the motrin away.

And this is what happens when you're done with smiling for the camera.

Stay tuned to see which photo I chose for the 2011 card.

The stars aligned and God smiled upon us and BOTH ladies are LOOKING AT THE CAMERA and kind of smiling.

May the force be with you as you attempt to capture magic this Christmas season.

Best of luck.


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Cheaper in Cabo?

The other day I saw that a Sr. Cara de Papa Interactivo (Translation: Interactive Mr. Potato Head) was going for $699.00 pesos at the store. That's $42.14 USD.

I felt that was insane for a Señor Potato Head.

I mean, a potato like that had better double as a roomba and vacuum my living room rug.

 As it turns out I was quite off regarding the popular potato head pricing.

Interactive Señor Potato Head is actually cheaper in LOS CABOS than on amazon. [Can I get a collective gasp from my Cabo-residing friends who are SUPREMELY tired of paying too much for everything in Cabo.]

See? American interactive Mr. Potato Heads sells for $49.98 here. That's a SAVINGS of $7.84.

So kids, come to Cabo for all of your interactivo-potato-head-Christmas-needs.


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Chatting

Thankgiving Cabo-Style at Flora Farm

This year we tried something new. We went to Flora Farm in San Jose and enjoyed an incredible Thanksgiving meal. (I've written about the farm here. It's amazing.)

I know, I know... who wants to go out to dinner on Thanksgiving? Um, we did. And I'll tell you what, the dinner was amazing. It tasted like someone's Grandma made it. It was home. The turkey was delicious... not one not-so-great side dish. Amazing mashed potatoes. And we didn't clean up a thing!

We were all happy.

On to the pictures.

This is my sweet niece, Bella. She's 3... almost 4. (Gasp.)

This is Lila and her cousin, Brody. (Bella's brother.) He'll be 2 in January. They're six months apart. (That's my brother in the background.)

My Lila.

Hello Monday.

Sleep is for the weak.

The truth of the matter is that sleep, at this juncture in our lives, is elusive.


First we had Lila. Sleep? A non-issue. We got.so.much.sleep. (Comparatively.)

Then 10 months later, I found out I was pregnant again.

Then Vivienne was born.

Then we potty-trained Lila.

Then there was teething.

And various colds.

And traveling.

And more colds.

And ear infections.

And growth spurts.

Somewhere in there the sleep has stopped.

One always has an issue. One wakes up the other one. Kids are fickle. Sound machines are no match for the lungs of my girls.

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I'll tell you what, we're tired.


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Best.Dog.Ever.

Lila is making sure that the Ferginator is cozy.

(That's a dishcloth.)

She's also singing her a lullaby.

Ferg just lays there.

Best.Dog.Ever.

Lila can count to ten. :)

Enjoy this cuteness.



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It's raining, it's pouring...

... good thing I got my car washed today.

Guilty Pleasure involving overweight Italian men.

I love Discovery Channel's Carfellas.

I can't help it. I do.

Their scratchy-voiced grammar is atrocious. This trio eats more than any human beings should. They're loud. They yell all of the time. They're ridiculous.

And I love them.

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...and your guilty pleasure?


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Thankful.

I love this day.

I have so much to be thankful for.

I hope your Thanksgiving is full of thanks, appreciation and love, too.


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Why I love my Mom.

My Mom lives in the woods. Up until approximately 2009 she was still using dial-up because DSL/cable wasn't yet available. And let's be honest, she wasn't ready for it.

That said, technology and my Mom go together like onions and peanut butter. Exactly.

Before I go any further I must say that my Mom is INCREDIBLE. She's funny, innovative and awesome. She tries new things and usually is good at all of them. (Anyone still using my Mom's homemade soap? I still love it.) AND, she's amazing at things that I could never do: she can cook ANYTHING from scratch sans a recipe, she can paint, sand or stain anything, she can find a solution for ANYTHING and she can make a game for kids out of anything. She's incredible.

That said, last Christmas my Mom got a kindle. Since she doesn't have wireless, it means that putting books on to her kindle can be tricky since I, her tech support, live in Mexico and she lives in Missouri.

Usually what I do is load her up with books whenever I see her. So, last July I did so. Fast forward to now: it's been a few months and Shirl needed new books.

So she calls me after the girls to bed.

Here's part of our conversation:

Me: Plug the kindle into your computer.

Her: Ok.

5 minutes later

Me: Mom, what are you doing?

Her: I can't plug it in.

Me: What do you mean you can't plug it in?

Her: I don't know. I could plug it in yesterday.

Me: If you could plug it in yesterday, YOU CAN PLUG IT IN TODAY.

Her: silence

Me: Mom?

Her: I don't know... something's different.

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No kidding, this was even BEFORE we started with the actual downloading of the kindle books.

While I will not bore entertain you with the details of the conversation, I will say that my favorite part was this:

After we tried to download the books to her PC, (I've been a mac user since 2003 and have since forgotten how PCs work so I'm virtually no help), she couldn't find them.

Me: Mom, where did you save the file?

Her: I don't know.

Me: Ok then. Mom, I'm going to email you the file as an attachment then you can open it or save it like you would any download. THEN we'll copy and paste it into your kindle folder.

Her: Ok.

[I send her the email with the attachment.]

Me: Ok mom, did you get the email?

Her: No. Wait a minute. Let me click refresh. No nothing.

Still nothing.

Let me sign out of my email since I haven't gotten it yet.

Me: Why are you signing out of your email?

Her: Because maybe my refresh is broken or something.

Me. No, Mom. Your refresh is not broken.

Her: Ok, I got your email.

Me: Ok, Mom. Now open the attachment and just REMEMBER where you save it.

Her: Ok.

Me: Ok, do you know where it is?

Her: [pause] No. I don't know where it went.

Me: What do you mean you don't know where it went? Where do all of your downloads go?

Her: I don't know! I can never find any of them!

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I LOVE this woman.

LOVE her.

:)

And for the record, we did get a book onto her kindle... 40 minutes later.



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It's simple.

It's that time of year...


If you are sick, do not go into the office and cough and sneeze your way through the day.

If your children are sick, do not send them to school.

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It's THAT easy.

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Showering woes.

That's me. I shower like that all the time. In my yard. With hose water.

I hate to shower. Let's be clear, I LIKE TO BE CLEAN... it's just that I hate washing my hair.

It's long.

It takes forever.

I feel strongly about conditioning and loathe that it's so time consuming.

There's a running joke in my household that I will do whatever I can to skip a shower. (I don't find it to be overwhelmingly hilarious, but Craig does. Every.day.)

So moving on: my showering experience? REVOLUTIONIZED this past weekend.

I try to follow a routine when I shower, but I usually fail miserably. (I forget to shave one leg more often than not. In fact, very little of my life is routined. It's problematic.)

Anywho, on hair-washing-days I get in the shower and wash my hair first so that I have plenty of time to let the conditioner soak in and do its magic on my mop.

I wash the hair.

Then, I add conditioner and proceed to massage it into ALL of my hair . (THIS is the time consuming part that I hate.) My fingers brush through the wet hair and it takes FOREVER. I hate it. And post-Vivienne the amount of hair fleeing my head has been repulsive. I've read this is normal.

So I shower and rinse my hair at the end. This is also time-consuming since I need to get all of the conditioner and knots out.

Well, yesterday? I put my conditioner on and DIDN'T stand there for 5-7 minutes brushing the conditioner through my wet hair with my fingers. I just put it on and finished my normal shower activities.

When it came to rinse out the conditioner I found that I got the SAME results as I normally would have WITHOUT doing the what I normally do.

Kids, I just shaved 5-7 minutes off of my shower routine.

This is BIG NEWS in my world.

If you read this post in its' entirety, you deserve 30,023 points.


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Lila Lunes: 2 years.

Dear Lila,

Today's post is an apology.

It's an apology for not taking you to the doctor for the past week when apparently your eardrum was bulging. (I had no idea.)

Photos I will never buy.

I was searching, "kindness" on google images and this stock photo came up.

Gross.

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Under construction

Don't mind me...

... I'm just trying some new things with the blog. And now I need to go to bed.


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Vivienne Viernes: 9 months

Ah, my sweet baby is getting so big. It's with a bit of trepidation that we will soon be entering into double-month-digits. In just 6 days she'll be 10-months-old. Ugh.

Q. How is Vivienne?
A. Great. She's super cute (as you can plainly see.)

SLEEP WOES. Help. If not solved, toddler will be for sale.

There are so many great things about this baby sleeping on a shelf. Awesome.

Oh peeps, we've got some SLEEP ISSUES [insert foot stomping] in the casa these days.

I can speak for my husband when I say, "Omg. WeAreSoTired. WeAreSoTired."

I need help. I need suggestions. I need a sound-proof room. I need at least 6-8 hours of UNINTERRUPTED sleep.

Background info:

• Lila is almost 2.5 years old. She's been sleeping in a "big girl bed" (toddler bed/crib/thing) since she was about 18 months old with little to no issues. She'd lay down, go to sleep, wake up, the end. She's been potty-trained for about 7 months now. She has no bed wetting issues, afraid of the dark, afraid of her room issues, blah, blah, blah. She's in a separate room from her sister. They do, however, share a common wall.

• Vivienne is almost 10 months old and admittedly I've done "sleep training" a bit differently with her. We abide by the "drowsy-but-awake" rule and for the most part, Vivienne is a great sleeper. I have, however, rushed in when she's crying more frequently than I did with Lila solely because I don't/didn't want Vivi's crying to wake Lila. 

Where we are today:

• Vivi goes to bed around 7:15 pm after her last feeding of the night. She then sleeps, usually, if LILA CAN KEEP HER MOUTH SHUT, until about 6-7 am. Beautiful. I'm convinced she'd sleep longer... if she didn't have an older [louder] sister. (NO, I do not wonder where Lila's constant outside-voice comes from. I know me.)
• Lila goes to bed after Vivienne - around 7:30-7:45 p.m. and...

...she GETS UP OUT OF HER BED NO LESS THAN 8 TIMES A NIGHT.

NOW, she used to get up about 3-5 times a night BEFORE she fell asleep. Now she's getting up a boat-load of times AFTER she falls asleep.

It is driving us INSANE.

She opens her door and then walks down the hall to wherever we are and stands there.

She never really has a "need."

Does she need to use the potty? No. Is she crying or sad? No. Does she need a drink? No. It's like, "Hey. I'm here. Hovering. In your business. When I should be in bed."

How do we normally handle this?

We scoop her up, put her back in bed and tell her not to get out of bed again.

NOTES:

1.) We are not co-sleepers so we don't welcome her with open arms into our bed. We've done this before. We all hate it. No one sleeps.

2.) We've attempted bribery. "If you stay in bed, you can have a ________ in the morning."

3.) We've used FORCEFUL, LOUD LANGUAGE. "DO NOT GET OUT OF THIS BED AGAIN, LILA. DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME."

4.) We've attempted to have Fergie sleep with her. (You know, in case she was lonely.) It didn't go over well. "Bergie, out. Out of Lila's bad. OUT."

The child is not AFRAID of her bed or her room, she simply doesn't want to be in it.

Monday night this get-back-in-the-bed dance lasted from about 11 pm to 5 am. It was hell.
We'd scoop Lila up and put her back in bed, she would SCREAM AND WAIL about the injustice of it all and ... then wake up Vivienne who would proceed to SCREAM in solidarity with her sister.

This happened about 3 times just that night alone.

Wednesday night [out of desperation] we locked her door [go ahead and gasp -- we have a VIDEO monitor. We can see and hear it all.] and told her that when the door is locked, she cannot COME OUT OF HER ROOM and she needs to get back into bed.

She yelled, "Mommy, Daddy... open de door! Open de door!" for 45 minutes and finally got back into bed and went to sleep. (Score!) (Keep in mind that meanwhile, Vivi is screaming because she's aware that there is a very loud disturbance just feet from her.)

So we tried that AGAIN last night, and what do you know -- SHE UNLOCKED the door and floated right into our room again.

"Hi Mommy."

So clearly locking the door isn't the solution.

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SO, WHAT DO WE DO NEXT?

Keep in mind that we aren't spankers. We just don't go there.

HELP.

Comments, please.

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Note:


**I am trying an idea from a co-worker. He says to scoop Lila up each and every time she gets out of bed and to not say a WORD to her. Just scoop, back to bed. Scoop, back to bed. She's getting attention each time we pick her up and with this potential solution, she won't be getting attention and in theory she'll get bored with this whole getting up, back to bed routine.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Until then, more suggestions, please.



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A truth I had never known.

I always eat the cookie/brownie/cake batter. I'm aware of salmonella, but as a gambler, I like to think it will never ever affect me.

That said, up until a couple of days ago I had no reason to believe that a box of cake mix would actually yield two dozen cupcakes as it states on the back of the box. I thought it was a lie... a goal. (Kind of like my driver's license weight.)

At best, when I make cupcakes I get about 19.

Well, looky up there next to my short, yet able-bodied, baking assistant.

Our recipe yielded 24 cupcakes!

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Well, I'll be...

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So, about my assistant,  I told her, "Hey Lila... smile!"

...and that's the face I got*.

 *to be fair, she was sick with a head cold at the time.

She looks like 'Lil John though, no?

I was like, "Lila, what do you think of all those cupcakes?"

She exclaimed, "Mama, bake 'em up. It'll be crunk. UHhhhhhh*."

*Please read, "UHhhhhh" in the 'Lil John voice. If you don't know the 'Lil John voice, well, that's a shame. As you can imagine, it's pretty amazing.


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Vivi polka dot cuteness

Playdoh is the coolest.

The princess loves playdoh.

Her Mama does, too.

I was pretty proud of my Dora this past weekend. (Lila was a fan, too.)

 

And I tell you what, we don't flip out about mixing colors in this house.

The colors are so much more beautiful when they're mixed together.

Oh, to be a kid again...


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