Does it make me a bad mom if...

I'm happy that Eliza is so sick that she has no voice? (Okay so I'm not happy that she's sick. I'm happy that her voice is so weak.)

Ever since Nathaniel was born my tolerance for crying has gone WAY down. So the rule for the older kids has become: if you need to cry do it in your room. Unless it's an injury or there's some very legitimate reason for the crying, I just don't want to hear it.

That's why I'm loving this today. Eliza's cry is normally especially loud and obnoxious, and because she's younger she does it more often than Benjamin.

But her cry today isn't really bothering me so much because it's so quiet. I'm not even feeling the need to send her to her room to do it (but just for the sake of habit I still am).

I hope that doesn't make me a terrible mother!

So funny!

Special Agent Oso, the greatest show ever! Okay so really it's pretty annoying. BUT, Benjamin is a HUGE fan and I mean HUGE. So, the great thing about the show is that we can get him to do absolutely anything simply by telling him that it's a special assignment that Mr. Dos needs him to complete. Then we break it down into 3 special steps and tell him he has a certain number of seconds to complete his special assignment (of course, we count very slowly).

Now we have a child who listens perfectly.

Off the charts

I had to take Nathaniel to see the Dr. this week. He weighed 13lb 8oz which is officially off the charts for his age. I sure do love those big cheeks though!

Day 1

Today was our first day of getting up and heading to the gym first thing.

I think this has to be the greatest gym there is.

Benjamin gets to go to actual fitness classes while I work out. They have everything from kickball classes to karate for him to do. They even do supervised pool play for them once he turns 4.

Eliza hangs out in the space maze until she's 2, then she can do the classes with Benjamin.

Nathaniel gets to hang out in the infant area, where he was very well taken care of. They'll change diapers and even feed your baby if you tell them to while you work out.

For adults they have any type of fitness class you could possibly think of. When I signed up they gave me 6 pages of class schedules.

I get to go do my workout and then take a nice shower and even get my hair and make-up done without being interrupted by little crazies. This is going to be fabulous and I can see the baby weight just melting away already.

4th of July

Here's Spencer and the kids lighting fireworks before we left for the real show tonight. The kids had a great time and managed to come out of it burn free.

P.S. Do you love my yellow lilies? They're my favorite thing about summer.

5 years

What we've accomplished in 5 years...

College graduation (yes, I was pregnant in that picture)


Benjamin


Moving to the east coast


Buying our first home (that's what the kitchen looked like when we moved in)


Eliza


Nathaniel

And after all that we're still in love and looking forward to the next 5 years...

The room is spinning...

Last night while I was laying in bed I would get dizzy anytime I tried to turn onto my back. It was a very strange feeling. So this morning as Spencer was getting ready to walk out the door for work I got up for a minute and couldn't walk in a straight line. I kept running into the walls. Eventually we decided he better stay home for the day since the dizziness was making me nauseous and I was worried about how I would carry a baby around when I couldn't keep my balance.
Spencer's first thought was dehydration so he made me drink a bunch of Gatorade and water. Didn't help. Then we thought maybe it was from exhaustion so I went back to bed and slept until about 10:00. It got even worse after that when I tried to get up. So finally we decided I needed to see a doctor. I was able to get an appointment for the afternoon. When we went in I was told I probably have benign positional vertigo. How weird is that? He said the spell could last anywhere from 3-5 days and I may or may not figure out what triggers it. He also said if it lasts longer than 5 days or gets any worse I need to go back so they can order a cat scan of my head to make sure I don't have a brain tumor. Can we say scary???

My birthday present

After 3 years of using the world's crappiest range, this is what I get.

Convection oven, flat cooktop, great price. Does it get any better than that?
I am absolutely giddy!!!
Saturday can't come fast enough

Chased down by a waiter

The setting: Mimi's Cafe for my birthday dinner...

What happened: I could tell our waiter wasn't loving having to serve our table, in fact no waiter is ever excited to see us walk in. We are every waiters worst nightmare. I mean seriously, 3 kids under the age of 4 just means lots of requests and lots and lots of clean-up. Then Spencer and I ordered water to drink and we only ordered one meal for the kids to share (I knew they weren't very hungry).
So we get our check and it's really not bad at all, $35. Spencer is the one to fill out and sign the reciept. As we are gathering our stuff our waiter politely thanks us and wishes us a good evening. Then, when we're about halfway to our car he comes running up behind us. As Spencer and I turned around to see what he wanted he says "I just wanted to say thank you guys for coming in, you were really great." After he walked away Spencer and I just kind of looked at each other with a "that was strange" kind of look, and I asked if he left a really big tip. He said he did 20%.
As he was buckling kids in he suddenly burst out laughing. As I looked up he said that he just realized that he actually left 40%.

I joked about Spencer going back in and saying "I'm sorry I made a mistake can I fix that please?"

On the up side though, if we ever go back there and get that same waiter we'll probably be treated like royalty. Of course, he'll probably be expecting another 40% tip...