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Friday, September 30, 2011

9 months

hi everybody!

i turned 9 months old yesterday! that's a lot of months! almost as many months as i was inside my mom so it's kind of a trip that i've been on the outside this long. i hardly remember what it was like in there.

i gave mom a really hard time with our photo shoot this month! hahahahaha! it was awesome. here i am all like "seriously mom, first of all, that flash is harsh. don't you know anything about taking pictures?"


i rolled around a bunch this month. i'm on the move these days! i've almost got the crawling thing down! except my one leg keeps getting stuck under me so i kind of have to just drag it along, but i don't let that stop me! oh heck no! there are about a million things i have been trying to get my hands on for months now! plants and dirt and keys filled with germs. remote controls and mom's camera bag. basically everything i'm not supposed to touch. cool right? hahahah! (that's my evil laugh.)


i went to the doctor today for my shots (that SUCKED.) and so she could weigh me and measure me and poke me and stick things in my ear and stuff. it was kind of a rough appointment since mom klunked my head on the wall right before i got the shots. honestly mom. try and keep it together next time. i got a flu shot and the shot for that diptheria thing my mom is always warning me about. i have to go back for a bunch more because i am behind. i don't want to think about  it.

but good news!

i weigh 26 lbs.
i'm 30 1/2'' tall
(that's over 2 1/2 feet, right? so i'm more than half as tall as snookie!)

the doctor said i am taller and weigh more than 95% of babies my same age. well duh.
obviously, i am also cuter than 95% of babies my age....



if you ask mom, she says i am cuter than 100% of other babies. how embarrasing.


oh, back to the photo shoot. basically, this is what most of the pictures mom took looked like. i told you ive got important places to be these days. i'm a real mischief.

i also did a number on my 9 month sticker, as you can see.
get it? i did a number on it!!!!!

ahhhhhahahahaha!!!



p.s. this is what i was talking about with the crawling.  see how my leg is stuck there? i can't seem to get it out from under me. does anybody have any tricks or anything? cuz i've got places to go in a hurry, cabinets with loud pots and drawers with knives to get into and general mayhem to conduct. please help. thanks.





 love, Ben



Monday, September 26, 2011

oooooh it's starting to get fun around here!!!

GUESS WHAT???? i got my iphone! i know, i know i should have waited for the iphone5 to come out blah blah blah but i just couldn't stand it another second and i got a sweet deal and i am here to say that this phone? gives me back a smidge of my superficial happy! i am having so much fun! my favorite thing to do is play around with all of the photo and video apps. i'm pretty sure that before i got it, one of my main reasons for wanting it was so i could instagram (follow me! Rach257) and now that i have it, i am instagraming the hell out of it...BUT i think i like the actual effects better in hipstamatic. i am love love loving the random shake feature that mixes up your film and flash choices. once i poked around with both of those for awhile, i actually started taking most of the pictures using the hipstamatic app and then saving them and going in to instagram afterwards and just instagraming them directly from my camera roll with the hipstamatic effects on them. is that cheating? i kind of feel like it is...

i am also digging the 8mm camera app...myfitnesspal (which so rudely told me that my dunkin' donuts pumpkin coffee with milk that i had this morning had THREE HUNDRED AND FORTY CALORIES...*faint*) and ben is all over the talking purple hippo app. he seriously comes unglued when i put that guy on...loves it like crazy. oh, and angry birds, of course. i know i am tardy to the party but angry birds is the shizz. what are some of your favorite apps?? seriously, tell me, cuz i want them all. i am app crazy right now!

another thing i love about finally having my iphone? finally getting to link up with a good life for her week in iphone pics!!! i have been wanting to do this link up forever but i felt way lame using pics from my craptastic junker LG flip so i just watched from the sidelines feeling like the nerdy kid at school who eats her boogers.

that's gross.

let me just be clear about this, i do not eat my boogers. i don't even know why i said that.

so here we go!! i don't have a full week's worth of pics cuz even though i got it on monday, it took me a couple of days to get the feel of it and everything. this week, i am just doing one day...saturday. ben's first major league baseball game. he loved every minute of it!!!



and i am loving every minute of finally being able to do this link up! hooray!





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Friday, September 23, 2011

bloglovin'

so in case y'all are interested, you can now follow this silly little blog with bloglovin' too! come join the party!

Follow my blog with Bloglovin


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Thursday, September 22, 2011

happy birthday to THIS guy

  circa 1973

who, judging from this picture, has apparently been hilarious and awesome for his entire life....and who grew up to be the BEST husband a girl could ever dream of having and the coolest, most fantastic dad to the sweetest little boy.

scotty, i am so lucky to have you for my very own....i love you with every bit of my heart and i hope today is good to you and that everyone treats you like a king...i hope that for you every day, but today especially because you deserve it for making all of our days so wonderful.

i know i say this every year, but i am so thankful that you were born.


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Monday, September 19, 2011

anniversary at the park

since the hubs and i were able to wrangle grandma into babysitting friday night, we celebrated our 5th anniversary a day early, at a seriously, seriously incredible restaurant....i changed out of my hideous maternity pants and into a dress of all things and ran lickety split to go get my hairs did…i even had time for a mani…what? absurd. who am i? 

by the way, last week i read on dutchess roz about OPI “tickle my francey” and i wrote up a little post-it and stuck it to my wallet (you should see the inside of my bag. maybe i will blog it one day. it looks like an atomic bomb went off. for serious.) because it was the best color i have ever seen and as well you know, i am obsessed with nail polish these days and there i was at the mani place with all my extra time after my blow out (extra time, she says. again, i ask…who am i??) and i saw it twinkling at me from the polish carousel and i grabbed it right up and sat happily down in my chair and my nails have never been so pretty. don’t walk, run. best color EVAH.)

anyway, dinner was out of this world and my company was even better. sadly, it just wasn’t the sort of place i felt comfortable whipping out my rickety little LG and snapping a cell phone pic of my petite filet, so you’ll just have to use your imagination. i try and keep it klassy whenever possible, you know.

our actual anniversary was saturday, and we decided to spend the day with the monkey down at the park having a picnic. it was undeniably fall, so we all got a little bundled up, picked up some sammies at the deli and headed over to the lake.



ben was all business, as you can see. he was way too busy trying to take everything in and figure it all out to crack a smile…swinging is a very serious endeavor.




and then, she {snapped}



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Saturday, September 17, 2011

5 years ago today

i married this goofball and my life has been exponentially better ever since (despite the occasional rough patch without which, we would not be human). he makes me laugh when i am sure i will never laugh again, he makes me feel loved when i am at my least loveable (which is pretty frequently), he takes care of me when i can't take care of myself, he gets me and he always has and he is the most amazing father to our little boy. i am forever thankful for the miracle that i found him becaause i know there is nobody in this world who fits me better. i am, without question, the luckiest.








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Friday, September 16, 2011

you make me feel like writing*

*please sing to the tune of "you make me feel like dancin', dance the night away, you make me feel like daaaaancin', dance the night away..."

the problem is, my kid doesn't sleep anymore, so as much as i want to string a few intelligent and witty words together for your amusement, these days? i'm finding it damned near impossible. and that's a real shame, cuz i like to write stuff, and i feel like i owe it to this blog and to the 7 people who read it (hi guys!love you! thanks for hangin' in!). the last month or so there's been an abundance of abbreviated posts, wordless wednesdays and crap lists on here...but i just sit here like a zombie and stare at the cursor and wait for the words to come and where they used to flow so freely and entertain me and provide me a tiny morsel of therapy, now the cursor just stares back, blinking.

i need sleep, guys. much like the issue of me still wearing maternity pants cuz i can't keep my fat face out of the potato chips, i know what the solution is, i am just fighting it tooth and nail, hoping like an idiot every day for a miracle.....

move the kid to his own room for the love of baby jesus.

i don't want to do it. i can't do it. i tried to do it once and it was a big fat fail even though, i am not embarrased to admit, i used raven's tin foil trick (which probably would have worked if he actually fell asleep till morning) and i am so tired, how am i actually going to survive a night....two nights...a WEEK of him waking up every hour in that crib and crying till i soothe him back to sleep? and before you even suggest it, before he was born, i talked a lot of sh*t about how i was absolutelypositivelytotally going to let him cry it out. he was going down in that crib in his room by himself starting from day one and i was going to be tough as nails about it, yes sir i sure was!

um, yeah. how's that workin' out, you ask? not so great actually.

and while i'm putting it all out there, i might as well just admit that not only is he in our room, he's in our BED. and has been. for his whole life. if he was in our room in a bassinet or something (right. like he would fit in a bassinet) maybe i would have a leg to stand on, but he's not. he's in the bed. sleeping the wrong way, all stretched out so his head is ramming my husband in the back and his feet are kicking me all night and he has stopped sleeping. he has basically stopped sleeping all together and all he does all night long is kick me and twist himself around in circles and try to get up on his hands and knees. for the entire night. i am basically not exaggerating. and then he falls asleep at 5am, which is awesome cuz by then, i am so pissed off about trying to get him to go to sleep all night that i'm all wound up and can't fall asleep and then the alarm goes off at 6.

blink. blink.

oh hi mommy. sorry about the sleeping thing, i've just got so much on my mind these days trying to crawl and grow more teeth and stuff. did you really mean it when you told daddy this morning that you wanted to send me back for some adjustments? trade in some of my cuteness in exchange for me sleeping better?
no baby. i didn't mean it. i was just delirious and sleep deprived. sigh.

so, to sum up....i want to write. i have a lot to write about actually. like me & the hubs and our 5 year anniversary tomorrow, the new iphone i am (finally!) getting on monday, favorite products i'm using lately, the haircut i am going for tonight, the street festival we might hit up this weekend and the glorious almost fall crisp, sunny weather we're having but....uh....i'm just going to lay my head down here on my desk for a minute and rest instead.........





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Wednesday, September 14, 2011

8 months

could i be any more tardy in writing this post? my little monkey turned 8 months old the day that hurricane irene blew through here in the northeast and one of the things i was most concerned about was not having enough light to take his 8 month pictures...

this photoshoot was a bit of  trainwreck anyway. my little boy is stubborn as anything and just a little independent thinker! if you call his name, he won't look at you untill he's ready, if you kiss him, he won't snuggle back unless he feels like it, tickle him to make him smile and he only giggles on HIS terms....i admire that, and i am proud of it but part of me hopes it's just a phase. i need snuggles from my sweet boy ALL the time, not just when he wants to give 'em!



my little boy is huge. he is still growing at warp speed and it's wild to watch. his sweet little head gets fuzzier every day with the silky white duck fur that is finally covering his big, round head. everybody still thinks he's bald because his hair is just so white.

he's still only got 4 teeth, but 2 more are trying to work their way down and with that has come a lot of grouchy tantrums and some restless nights. he's also SO close to crawling so he's got a lot on his mind these days, which probably contributes to his less than ideal sleep habits as of late. he gets on his hands and knees from a sitting position and rocks back and forth and then he falls flat on his belly and gets pissed off. poor little guy.


he's so smart and so charming. the girls go crazy for him and with good reason. even more important than all of that, he is just so, so sweet. when i pick him up at the end of the day, he just looks at me and touches my whole face, gently and slowly with the tips of his little fingers and then lays his sweet, soft little head on my shoulder. he is the love of my life.







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Sunday, September 11, 2011

september 11, 2001

we had gotten back to the hotel early the night before. we were only in new york for a quick 3 day trip to interview with the co-op board of the building we were planning to move into in the fall, all the way from california. huge move, huge change, huge adventure, huge excitement. we had spent the day shopping and getting lost looking for the subway in the rain, the kind of summer rainstorm that rolls through like a freight train and drenches you from head to toe in a matter of minutes if you're not under cover, fat juicy raindrops pelting every inch of you, soaking you to the bone and gone as fast as they came leaving a wake of steam on the concrete, stifling humidity in the air, the smells of the city, pleasant and otherwise, suspended and exaggerated.

not paying attention and not being particularly familiar with the city, we missed our subway stop at chambers street and had to exit at the next stop and get back on going back one stop. we could have walked the 5 blocks, but we were wet and it was hot and we had an interview to get ready for so we stayed on the 1 train down to the WTC exit, then got off and turned around. we exited into an underground mall that we never knew existed. there was the gap and jcrew and all sorts of fun stores. who knew there was a whole mall underneath the world trade center?! we promised we would come back tomorrow. needless to say, we didn't keep that promise.

 the interview later that evening was very bizarre. we expected a boardroom of tenants, looking over our documents and scrutinizing our every comment. instead, we met with one lady in the basement of the apartments in a room that looked like a janitor's closet. she looked like she had just rolled out of bed and, after introducing herself and asking us a handful of questions, she told us she didn't see any reason why we couldn't move in and we were free to leave. 6400 miles round trip. 12 hours in flight. 5 minutes in a basement and we had our new york apartment. it was all happening.

we headed to little italy to go to our favorite place and get some lasagna and a glass of wine to celebrate. neither one of us was feeling quite right at dinner, a little sick to our stomachs, just kind of inexplicable "off" which is why on one of our only 3 nights in the city, we were back in bed at the hotel by 9pm. i remember turning the tv on to vh1 while we were getting ready for bed. i remember that they were playing alicia keys "fallin'".

our hotel was on the corner of chambers and west broadway in lower manhattan. we had stayed there twice before, both times on lower floors with a view of the brick wall of the neighboring building. on this particular trip, our room was on the 7th floor with windows facing south. one of the windows didn't even have a screen so we slept with it open, wrapped in the late summer breeze.

around 5am, shauna got up to use the bathroom. she was in and out of the bathroom for the next 2 hours with stomach cramps. by 8:46am we had both finally fallen back asleep just deep enough to be completely disoriented. the noise was deafening, the building was shaking, it was an earthquake. a big one. we jumped out of bed and ran for the bathroom doorway, halfway there realizing we weren't in california, we were in new york and this wasn't an earthquake and then she screamed. a blood curdling, paralyzing scream, and she fell to her knees with her hands over her mouth and started to cry and i looked out the window where she had been looking and i saw the north tower of the world trade center engulfed in flames. i looked down to the street and saw people running up from the subway, buying disposable cameras from the bodega on the corner and taking picture after picture. people crying, people running, sirens. shauna continued to cry and shake and stare, i stepped away from the window and searched every corner of my mind for a reasonable explanation.

it was a terrible accident. it must have been a small plane, flown by an amateur pilot. how could it have gone so wrong?

it was an explosion. somebody mixed some chemicals and lit a match. it was just a terrible accident.

it was just a terrible accident. a bomb. we were being attacked. we were at war. no. it was just a terrible accident. whatever was happening was not intententional. this was obviously just a terrible accident.

i paced. i started to pack my things. i turned on the tv, but there was no coverage, no information.

she started screaming again from the bathroom floor, where she still knelt crying with her hands over her face. the screams were filled with terror and i ran to her side and looked up at the single wall of fire just in time to see united flight 175 fly into the south tower. it flew in from the south, so all i saw from our window was a wing and then an explosion out of the north side of the tower spanning what must have been 20 floors. it was and will remain the most horrific, terrifying image burned on my brain, but i was outside myself by then in a way i have never been able to explain.

it was just another accident, i promised. i knew that was a lie. there must be something terribly wrong with the air traffic controllers. this is a horrible, horrible accident.

it wasn't an accident.

it occured to me that it was very possible that we were about to die.

i looked out the window again, down to west broadway. sirens, screaming, hundreds of civilians running north, covered in debris and blood, policemen and firefighters running south, some for the last time.

i called my mom, back home in california. she was sleeping, completely unaware. i can't remember what i said because there was no way to explain. i was frustrated that she was oblivious to the enormity of what i was trying to tell her. how could she have known?

i continued throwing things in my purse. a pair of socks. my curling iron.

all of the sudden, i heard a low rumble start and the building began to vibrate. the noise got louder and shauna started to scream again. by now, she had picked herself up off the bathroom floor and was bracing herself against the open window. we stared as the south tower fell. an indescribable wave of dust, smoke and debris rolled down the streets with the speed and force of a tsunami. we watched people captive in the inferno of the still standing north tower jump out office windows, choosing suicide over murder. i snapped back to reality, slamming the window shut with seconds to spare before our entire hotel was engulfed in a thick cocoon of grey smoke and ash. looking out the window, it was a wall of white. we couldn't see anything, it was like a curtain had come down and all i could hear was screaming and sirens.

it took 5 minutes for the dust to settle enough to see that the north tower was still burning. there was a layer of soot on the windowsill 2'' deep. we could see the tops of shorter buildings all around us, and the ground. it looked like a winter wonderland. everything was covered in ash. everything was white. on the street, all traffic had obviously been closed off. people we walking aimlessly, sobbing, covered and bleeding, towels on their heads, towels covering their mouths. the loud speaker came on for the hotel and they announced that we were being evacuated. i grabbed my purse, assuming we would return for the rest of our things later. we took the stairs down to chambers street and stood in front of starbucks. the scene on the ground was indescribable. from the 7th floor window, i was an observer. standing on the street, i was a very real player in this, now undeniable, attack on our country.

a policeman was standing there. i asked him "where do we go?" he said, simply, "head north." so we covered our mouths with towels stolen from the hotel and we wove our way in between the hordes of people, the mass exodus, heading north.

 the further we walked, the more quiet the city got. it was surreal to be amongst the deafening silence in the noisiest city i had ever been in, except for the sirens and the crying. i saw a businessman in a suit riding his bike, travelling south towards his nightmare, sobbing so hard i didn't know how he could see to steer his bike. i got the feeling he didn't have a destination anymore anyway. i saw a woman in a suit, walking north with us, stop at a planter box and vomit violently. i heard a familar rumble and we turned around to see the north tower fall. everyone walking stopped and turned. some fell to the ground and wept, some just stood and stared, but everyone stopped. we had walked far enough by then that the rolling wave of debris didn't reach us but we ducked into a coffeshop anyway. we ordered breakfast, but we didn't eat it. we just sat there and tried to understand.

we hardly spoke all day. we kept walking north, trying to think of people we knew in the city that we could call, someplace we could stay for the night. the further north we got, the less aware and effected people were, but the city was still in complete shutdown. we wandered the streets of greenwich village aimlessly. it was an empty movie set of cobblestone streets. we tried to make some calls at a payphone, but all circuits were busy.

we walked to central park and back down to times square. we tried to give blood but they couldn't take any more volunteers that day. i remembered my mom's friend suzie who had kept a $180/month rent controlled studio apartment in new york city the whole time she was living next door to us in california. i called 411 from a payphone and got her phone number. i called her without any idea if she would even remember me. i used to go up to her apartment all the time when i was little when she lived next door to us. we would make ice cream in her ice cream maker and i would play with her cat, felicity. she answered and i told her who i was. of course she knew exactly who i was. she said "thank you for calling me! i'm ok!" and i told her i was ok too and explained where we were. she told us to come over right away so we walked over to 52nd and 2nd and spent the night with a family friend i hadn't seen or spoken to since i was 6 years old. we slept on her twin size murphy bed with a cat an inch from my face.

so will i remember? i couldn't forget if i tried.


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Saturday, September 10, 2011

irene

i know irene is old news by now, as are katia and lee and whoever else is brewing in the atlantic waiting to wreak havoc on vacation destinations i dream about daily, but i have a few pictures to share of our neighborhood on the afternoon after she rolled through. it's taken me awhile to get around to this...the longer i went without updating, the more it weighed on me and the further i pushed it away. the last couple of weeks have seemed particularly hectic...in a good way, but hectic nonetheless, so getting to my laptop to upload and edit seemed impossible and everyone knows that blog posts without pictures are a lot less fun. and there it is. all of my excuses behind me, i'm starting fresh.

i've got ben's 8 month post in the wings, 2 weeks late, and i also have somewhat regressed feelings regarding the 10th anniversary of 9-11-01 that would probably be theraputic to get off my shoulders. so that's what we have to look forward to..maybe....in the meantime, here's a glimpse of what little miss irene did to our neighborhood...






when the power is out, an early afternoon nap is almost obligatory...


when your power goes off at 6:30 in the morning and you have 9/10ths of your birthday fudgy the whale cake and a giant bottle of kettle one in the freezer, there is only one sensible option for dinner and you're lookin' at it....

i am thankful that we were spared. i am sorry for those who had it worse, lost power for longer, suffered more destruction. it was a pretty fascinating thing to experience.
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