As I type thing, I am drinking a boozy milk shake that contains a ground up chocolate chip cookie and coconut fudge ice cream. Just to give you some context on how TOTALLY worth it the 16 hour drive to South Carolina is.

Sunday:

The rarest animal in the aquarium: my husband

Cupcake face

I took this picture with a telephone.

She’s a cat burglar making her getaway.

Monday:

PEEK A BOO

Extremely loud trip to BJ’s

Happy Birthday Mr. Sendak. We’ll keep the wild rumpus going for you.

Tuesday:

Hanging up his coat for his last day of school

She really, really loves lemonade

Taking the animals to the vet

Wednesday:

Stuck in traffic and we haven’t even left Connecticut. Evan’s face explains it all.

Too cool for Delaware

Old timey fun with Mormor

Friday:

Spoiled, spoiled children

Spoiled, spoiled me

Never leaving.

Saturday:

Pre-pool relaxation

A very Low Country lunch

Who needs forks when you can pick up your cake like a sandwich?

I can’t even believe we have MORE DAYS of vacation before we leave…and when we do we have MORE FUN STUFF to do before we go back to Connecticut. My children are going to sleep for a week when we get home. It will be glorious.

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This is our third year on Kiawah Island and it’s the best one yet. There are more friends, more food, an endless supply of cocktails, a pool at the perfect temperature and a beach that feels like it’s all for us. Apologies for nothing but pictures for the next week.

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Evan’s first day of school post here.

Caroline’s first day of school post here.

Their last day:

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There was a ton of stuff going on in our area over the weekend: members weekend at the Aquarium, the International Food Festival in Mystic, the annual Butterfly Pavilion in Norwich AND it was Connecticut Open House weekend.

Unfortunately, it was also one of those weekends where none of us really felt like getting off the couch. I swear our day in Brooklyn last Sunday threw the kids off all week, and there were a ton of couch naps that led to super early wake-ups that meant even more couch naps and we were all a little sleep-deprived and short-tempered. E had duty Friday which meant he didn’t get home until lunch on Saturday, so that day was mostly a wash. I tried to fit ALL THE THINGS in on Sunday and ended up with two very unhappy kids in a butterfly pavilion, begging to go home. So we did. I like family activities, I don’t like torturing my children. Even to get more photos. Clearly I got enough photos.

They refused to consider any of the food besides The Bleu Squid for grilled cheese and cupcakes.

Black Forest cupcake

Lobster roll. Lobster & a little mayo with lemon on top. As it should be.

Caroline was really, really excited to get her face painted and tried hard to sit still. Of course, she’s 2. I’m 31 and I can hardly sit still to have my make-up done at the Clinique counter at the mall (I don’t like people touching my eyes) (NO ONE likes people touching their eyes!). The patient make-up artist managed to get it done though – including a layer of glitter over the whole thing – and Caroline became Kitty Caroline. She ran all over the Oldey Mistickey Villagey meowing and stopping people in their tracks to go “Awwwwwwwww! Look at her face! She’s a kitty! Bob, Bob come look at this kitty! Isn’t she adorable?!” At this point I feel like taking my child out in public is like hanging out with one of the minor Kardashians. Krispy? Krumbly? Whatever they’re called. I should start spelling it Karoline.

It’s like E is wearing THREE hats!

Caroline met Ariel & got her autograph. She was pretty impressed. And a little skeptical.

The Butterfly Pavilion was cool, but kind of crowded. They encouraged you to let the butterflies crawl/land on you and even had sugar water to dab on your fingers. Caroline liked it. Evan was D O N E, so we didn’t stay long.

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A Brief List Of Lessons I REALLY Should Have Learned By Now But Can’t Seem To Keep In My Thick Skull:

1. Eating too much crap will make you feel like crap.
2. Wash your face before bed.
3. Wear sunscreen. No, really. Wear it. All the time.
4. Don’t stay up until midnight when you know your kids get up at 5:30 am.
5. Going grocery shopping without a list is ineffective and expensive.
6. Procrastination just makes you anxious about that thing you have to do, so then you’re anxious AND you still have to do it.
7. There is no such thing as “Just checking Facebook really quick”.
8. Ignoring the check engine light in the car doesn’t make it go away.
9. If you spend all your money, then you do not have any money.
10. It’s really hard to end a list at only 9 things.

This post is partially inspired by Amy’s list of lessons she’s learned, which is a great list and can all pretty much be added to THIS list, since I’m sure I won’t remember to put any of it into practice. I feel like a major part of being a grown up is getting to a point where you stop making the same mistakes over and over, which is why I will NEVER be a real grown up. I’ve been making the same mistakes since my very first homework assignment was due in school, the first time I ever got an allowance, the first time I went to a water park without my mom. And yet! Yesterday I put off a writing assignment I had due, spent unnecessary dollars on candy I didn’t need (and shouldn’t eat), and already sunburned my nose twice this season.

I wish there was a definitive way to change a behavior, permanently, forever that ISN’T just “will-power and hard work.” I realize that makes me lazy, and possibly a shitty person in general, but if I have learned anything about myself it’s that I can’t do it all. Something always slips. And at this point in my life the areas where I cannot afford to screw up – mainly the two small, blurry, red-headed areas usually hovering around my knees – take a lot of energy. If will-power has to be used for either “Don’t eat that cookie your kid just handed you” or “Don’t shout at your other kid for grinding that cookie into the carpet”, I usually eat the cookie. Even when I make things as easy for myself as possible (I bought face wipes and left them on my nightstand so I would ALWAYS clean my face before bed. I still forget.) I can’t seem to follow through. Do I have a chemical deficiency? Am I without a brain part? Did I miss will-power day at school?

Maybe the trick is baby steps. Teeny tiny itty bitty changes over a long, long period of time. If I start drinking a glass of water first thing every morning, maybe in a month I’ll drink 60 oz a day. Maybe if I can go to bed at 11:45 for a few nights in a year I’ll be in bed at 9:30. Maybe if I can skip that iced coffee from Dunkin Donuts and save my pennies in a hundred years I’ll be able to hire a butler to make me all my iced coffees at home! Or maybe I’ll start trying to make changes some other time. Later. Maybe after I check Facebook.

p.s. Unrelated to anything in the post – except for maybe the procrastination thing – I asked Siri (in my iPhone) to sing to me yesterday and this is what I got. I know making Siri say funny stuff is really old news, but it still cracked me up.

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