These are all from Saturday on Kiawah Island, South Carolina

Crab boil. We went through two loaves of bread just dipping it in the broth.

The next three I took with the 200mm lens that lives at the beach house. It weighed a TON but holy gorgeous shots, Batman.

Pim’s cups, courtesy of our English bartender

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.

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.

Almost half-way through May? How is that even possible?

Sunday:

When the weather is this nice, it’s hard NOT to go to church – we can almost see it from our yard.

Carrying 40 lbs on my back definitely counts as a workout.

Explaining to Daddy that quesadillas are the best.

Monday:

READY TO GO

Hats

Spring cleaning my favorite room of the house

Tuesday:

Good morning!

I think this sign is in the wrong place.

Thinking about running away, as usual

Wednesday:

CANONBALL!

Good listener waits his turn

Sleepy girl

Thursday:

Rain isn’t so bad when your raincoat is this cute

He already thinks balls are hilarious

Cheeseburgers are always the right answer.

  Friday:

I don’t even know what this thing is.

Caroline’s definition of “playdate” is “push me on the swing for two hours”.

This does not seem fair.

Saturday:

Caroline has joined a penguin colony

I’M THE KING OF THE WORLD!

And then I died of cuteness.

It’s been pouring since about noon and I have a serious case of the “I don’t really want to do anything”s. Luckily tomorrow is Sunday and I can tackle the laundry, dishes, piles of toys AND get my plants in the ground. Probably.

Today is another installment on my recent theme: parenting gets easier and you’re a good mom. YES your kid will eventually eat a vegetable. YES he will survive even on Goldfish and cheese slices. YES your kid will probably be fine even if he hates bottles and you can’t ever leave him for more than 2 hours at a time and you feel like you’ll be breastfeeding until he’s 12.

Evan had his four year well-child visit on Tuesday. The visit itself was kind of awful, with two children sobbing about their shots (despite the fact that only one child even GOT shots) but the information from the visit was great. Evan is 40.5 pounds and 41 inches tall, which puts him just below the 75th percentile and right on the curve he’s been on since his 2-year check up. They also calculated his BMI at 16, which a) does a 4 year old really need to know their BMI? and b) obviously doesn’t mean the same thing for a kid, since 16 falls in the “significantly underweight” category for adults and my kid is clearly not underweight. He’s as healthy as can be and impressed the pediatrician by saying his favorite food was apples. SO MANY APPLES.

It was a good check-up. As the doctor asked her questions I felt an overwhelming sense of “I got this. ” Despite the fact that it’s been almost three years since Evan fell of the growth curve I used to still get nervous when they pulled out the charts. Finally I feel like I can own our choices and our mistakes – when the doctor asked if I thought Evan’s speech was a little unclear I said it was probably because we relied on a sippy cup for too long but we had already switched to straws and I wasn’t worried. Then the doctor started asking ME for advice, since she has a 2 year old she’s struggling to get off sippy cups because he has been so reluctant to give up bottles and they finally found a sippy he liked and she doesn’t want him to stop drinking milk and she wasn’t sure what to do and did I like the take’n’toss cups as an alternative? (Yes.)

There’s nothing like seeing your pediatrician as just another mom struggling against the whim and will of a toddler to make you realize we’re all just doing the best we can as parents and things will be OK.  Of course, telling you things will be OK is not going to make you believe they will be OK, but try to  hold that knowledge deep inside. If you think there is something wrong, there might be something wrong and getting it checked out is the right choice. Always. But don’t feel guilty over every less-than-ideal-nutrition bite that crosses your kid’s lips. I wish I could go back and hug my previous self who thought she was doing everything wrong when it came to feeding my kid and show her 4 year old, 75th percentile Evan. He’s doing great, which means I am too.