Catching Up

I've decided to do a post of a hodge podge of things. I just wanted to get caught up with a few little things that we have been up to so that I can start blogging a bit more regularly.

First off, Mia got invited to her first birthday party, and she had a wonderful time. The theme was Sesame Street, and the parents did a great job of decorating the park house as well as having a lot of nice appetizers and breakfast choices for both the parents and kids. In all honesty, we were hoping to leave about an hour into the party because we had a swim class after, but it was pretty clear after about 15 minutes that it would be better to stay. We also ADORE the birthday girl, so we wanted to be there to help her celebrate.

Eating some fruit at the sticker/coloring table. Mia chose to wear a Cookie Monster hat and Ten couldn't resist putting on an Elmo.

The parents also hired the music teachers from Mia's school to perform at the event. They sang some Sesame Street songs as well as the birthday girl's favorites. Mia was on the makeshift dance floor having a great time.

The party was a really good time, and they also got great little gift bags to take home. The parents did a really excellent job! It got me to thinking about what we should do for Mia's second birthday. In all honesty, she will still be at the age where she doesn't need a party with lots of people and friends....and her birthday is only a week after Baby #2's due date....decisions. 

In other news, Ten made two trips to Target/Aldi over the weekend. This is a big deal for us because we don't get to shop at the cheaper big box places....like rarely ever. Ten took advantage of his 4 day weekend and made two runs over to East Harlem to pick up some things.

Children's vitamins for Mia, an Elmo toothbrush for her stocking, some baking pans for Christmas, dental floss, and a Rapunzel towel. Mia loves all of the bigger girl's towels at swim class and is always pointing out the different princesses she sees so I'm sure she will love this....also being saved for Christmas.

We bought a few bottles of the Mott's Tots juices, some fruit snacks, two boxes of Bisquick, and some movie theater butter popcorn for movie nights.

More juice, vitamins, MiraLax for Mia's tummy, popcorn seasoning, and more...We got so much more, but I'll stop sharing here. 

Let's see. Mia and Ten like to play a new game which makes me super nervous....but they seem to think it is a lot of fun. Mia will walk along the back of the couch saying "ichi, ni, ichi, ni." She will usually say "dada" and point for Ten to come up too....and he does. I should get a pic of both of them practicing the balance beam.

Lastly, we finally got some snow! I have been waiting and waiting for it to finally get to us, and last Saturday it snowed all day and into the night. So, Sunday morning we woke up, ate breakfast, and got dressed to go play in our backyard (known to others as Riverside Park).

Having a much better time than last year. Mia really enjoyed it, and so did we.

Carrying around snowballs and then throwing them on the ground. 

Mia decided she wanted to walk down the snowy hill, so Ten went with her while I pushed the stroller down the walkway. Very cute picture.

Finally, Mia wanted to play in the park. She had a great time swinging and was pretty upset when we decided to head home. However, she was sitting in a big pile of water and freezing...so we had to call it a day.

Anyway, this is basically how we spent our last two weekends. We've celebrated a birthday, played in the snow, got some shopping done, did our swim lessons, wrapped Christmas presents, and much more.

Weekend Update: Trip to Grand Central

Happy Monday!

I am in a super good mood. It probably has to do with the combination of a nice weekend combined with the upcoming holiday. 

Let's see. Ten had a whole 3.5 days off, so I got a major break. He shuttled Mia to 5 different classes and gave me a much needed break. That is right. On Thursday afternoon he took her to gym class followed by a slot I had booked at the indoor playground. On Friday, he took her to a party for two hours. Saturday, he was out the door at 8:00 to take her to another session at the indoor playground, and then Sunday he took her to swimming class. Talk about a lot of quiet and peace that I got to experience. I am lucky to have a guy who is so willing to take Mia out...and he loves it. It is a huge win-win for everyone.

We also had lots of time to spend together. We went to breakfast with some good friends where we had good conversation and overpriced pancakes (seriously need a new breakfast place). We also decided to take Mia to the holiday train show at Grand Central Station. She had a great time watching the choo-choo cars as she calls them. It was also my very first time to Grand Central, and it is beautiful. I will admit that I have been pretty disappointed by most sites here (sorry Lady Liberty and Times Square), but this was a really beautiful place.

Here are some of the photos of the train exhibit we saw.

Mia loved watching the trains go by.

I seriously could not get a good picture of the main terminal. I think you need to go during the day actually. I did get this lovely picture of these two though.

Let's see in other news....we are well into Christmas shopping. I seriously hope I can knock everything out within the next week or so. I'm pretty sure I can if I stay on top of it all. I am also in the process of interviewing doulas as well as trying to figure out how we can do a better job of celebrating New Year's. We kind of failed last year, and we both want to do a lot better this year.

In some disturbing news, I am pretty sure that my doctor's office ran genetic tests on me without my permission. I have actually refused all testing, but got a letter in the mail the other day from a lab talking about said tests that were ordered by my doctors. I am one unhappy patient....let me tell you....wonder what they will have to say.

Halloween Part 1

We have been in desperate need of a decluttering/reorganizing of our apartment. I think I have mentioned it several times. So, I called in emergency backup last week. My mom and her husband came and helped me rip through the apartment. In about a day we were able to reorganize all of the closets, the entire kitchen, and the entire bedroom. This leaves only the dining/kitchen area left for me and Ten to work on. Finally, we have some order in the madness.

We also were able to have a bit of fun while they were here.

We celebrated a birthday.

The gorgeous cheesecake that Ten picked up on his way home. I would say it was enough for 12 people. We had cheesecake for days.

On Saturday, we went over to the Pumpkin Fest at Central Park. A pumpkin patch in the middle of the city. We got there right when the event began, so we barely had any wait time at all. 

Our little bumble bee deciding which pumpkins would be going home with us.

Family photo with one of our pumpkins.

Heading over to the other stations. They had lots of games and even a haunted house....all for free I might add...even the pumpkins....really nice event.

Making the pumpkin all pretty to take home.

Mini area for fall photos.

 After looking around at some of the booths, we decided it was time to go grab lunch. Also, it was getting so crowded at the park that we wanted to escape before it just got too tiring. We decided to pop over to a restaurant called Dallas BBQ. The serving sizes were absolutely huge and the BBQ itself was pretty good, but some things were below average....I doubt (or pretty much can guarantee) that we won't be coming here again.

Mia and her pipe cleaner spider checking out the decor.

An onion loaf....which was pretty much tasteless!! I had to dump tons of salt on mine to make it edible. That is saying a lot from people that don't salt anything.

Honey roasted chicken (really good), baby back ribs, corn bread, and very, very tasteless fries.

Free Halloween cupcakes to end the meal...I think Mia was pretty excited to get to eat the icing off of it without anyone stopping her. Such a pretty smile.

When we got home it was around 2:00, and so we were all pretty tired. Ten and Mia napped while the rest of us watched a bit of TV. Around 4:00 we headed back out to a Halloween party for kids at a nearby church. They had lots of little activities for little ones.

Playing with chalk.

This was the first time Mia got to play with hula hoops, and I'm pretty sure she thought they were the coolest things.

She also got to play in her very first bouncy house. We usually have to skip these because there are just too many big kids, but the church did a great job of grouping kids by age.

On Sunday, my mom headed back home. We also got a phone call saying our swimming class was cancelled because the teacher was sick. I was secretly doing back flips in my mind because that meant we had a whole day to ourselves to just hang out at home.

Fire Island

Last weekend we decided that we wanted to take Mia to the beach. I was all like....hey, let's go to Coney Island.....it costs like $5 round trip and the sand castle competition is going on. Ten was all like....hey, it's Coney Island....I don't want to watch trashy people in thongs make out on the beach. Fair enough.

Luckily, we have a third person in the house that makes good decisions for us....

Mia was like...hey, I have an idea. I'm on the phone with someone that says we can stay at their beach house on Fire Island...why don't we do that?

So, we packed up our beach gear and food and headed over to Fire Island. We took the subway to Penn Station...and then we took the Long Island Railroad to Babylon...and then we changed trains to Bay Shore...and then there was a shuttle bus ride...and finally a ferry ride. Yes, it wasn't that easy to get too.

Mia on the first leg of the trip eating her baby jerky (otherwise known as strips of rotisserie chicken).

Fire Island was great. We slept a lot. We ate a lot of food. We played in the sand. We swam....well Ten swam. Mia was terrified of the ocean at first, and I got in for about 5 minutes before I realized that I didn't like salt water and sand and waves all attacking me at the same time.

We had the beach almost completely to ourselves.

Mia was wondering why we were forcing her to walk in all of this sand...was it a form of cruel exercise? She wanted to be carried...A LOT.

Mia: "Guys why aren't we checking out that cool moon up there instead of this silly camera?"

"Uh-oh" Every time the waves came crashing in.

We also decided to try to hunt for some of our food....but lacked the appropriate weaponry. Darn.

The next morning we checked out the town a little bit before going back to the beach to say our goodbyes.

"I want to fly this thing home, and then keep it in our living room to hang out in."

Mia chewing on a leaf stem...that she fashioned herself....proud of our little Huckleberry. 

Heading back to the house to pack our bags and then make the 3 hour trip home. My pictures did not do this place justice at all. It was the cutest little beach town. Either way it was nice to be able to get away from the city before summer ends.

Another Weekend

We had another pretty typical weekend. I wonder what everyone else does with their families all weekend long, but this is pretty normal for us.

We started with Friday evening going to a "Friday Fun for Everyone" program at New York Kids Club. It was a two hour long event where the kids got to play on the rock wall, balance beam, uneven bars, and trampoline. They also had the mats set up in an obstacle course. Mia spent about 45 minutes just running back and forth on the trampoline. She was having a great time!

After a while in the gym, we went over to the craft room and made monsters out of foam shapes. Mia's was so cute, but she ripped all of its body parts off before we could get a pic. This followed with a sing-a-long and then more gym time. Ten was able to show up for the last 45 minutes of the party, so we played in the gym some more and then had snacks and pizza.

Next weekend they are having a USA themed event. It sounds like a lot of fun, so we went ahead and signed up for that too.

On Saturday morning, we were all awake a little bit before 6:00. Ten was like....let's go for a walk...and that sounded like a good idea. We were walking up towards Morning Side Heights when he said that there was a really good bagel shop that we should try. We ended up walking a short 12 blocks to get to the bagel shop when we found out that they didn't take debit cards. Oh well, another time then....so we headed to Starbucks for a quick breakfast. 

Checking out the store.

Mia saw a dog outside, so she had to go check him out too. She loves dogs!

Eating an apple fritter with juice. We all shared this since it was so big. Really good.

Ten and I each ordered Iced Coffees. He got caramel syrup and I got vanilla....they were really just so-so. We actually make it better at home.

I was so sad that there were no seasonal summer drinks at Starbucks. They had some chocolate something or another special drink, but I didn't feel that it was all that summery.

After going home, Mia and Ten took naps while I cleaned up and started getting things prepped for dinner later (chicken wraps and stuffed mushrooms...so good). 

We all ate lunch when they woke up and decided to go to the park to play in the water. I told Ten about a really fun park called River Run, so we walked down to 83rd. This park has a fountain as well as a little canal for the water to run down in....lots of fun.

On Sunday morning, we headed to Hippo Park at like 7 am. Can you tell that we hit up lots of parks on the weekend? There are just so many options to choose from!

At 11:30 we went to swim class and after did some shopping at Michael's, Modell's, and Whole Foods. We actually went to Whole Foods to just pick up milk but then got some mac and cheese, soda, and canned raviolis because they were cheaper at Whole Foods and "organic".

Here are some of the things we picked up:

Something to hang on the door for 4th of July

Flags (Mia loves playing with these) along with this cute USA piece that Mia and Ten picked out.

A soccer ball for Mia (apparently Ten promised her he would get her one the other day), some star shaped cookie cutters for Tanabata, and multivitamins.

Finally, we played on the soccer fields near our apartment (which are astro turf) until about 8:30 pm after dinner and then came home and all had baths.

Blurry....but you get the idea.

Our plans for today include mainly just gymnastics and art/music/story time since the weather is supposed to be terribly hot! Also, I'm hoping to finish up the second season of Big Love....maybe...and making an herb grilled chicken for dinner with corn on the cob and mashed potatoes. Easy day ahead of us.