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Never Boring {$100 Giveaway!}

Thursday, March 20th, 2014

Before I had kids I was bored a lot. I don’t think I realized I was bored – I probably thought I enjoyed taking long naps and sleeping until noon and spending all my money on shoes. But it turns out I don’t actually enjoy any of those things all that much.

Well, I mean, obviously I still like naps. Everyone likes naps (except the children who actually should be taking them).

The first year after I got married we lived in Virginia Beach. Despite being young and thin (siiiiiigh) and living directly on the beach, I HATED it. It felt like there was nothing to do. All the guys E worked with either had kids or were trying to have kids (as a 23 year old with no children I was sort of an anomaly in the MilSpouse community). I remember going to a lot of street fairs or walking down to the cheesy beach shops or driving past the aquarium and thinking “If I had kids, this would be way more fun.”

Here in Connecticut I hear a lot of the younger, single guys complain about nothing to do. But since I have kids, I STRONGLY disagree. We have memberships to the aquarium, the seaport, the children’s museum and the science center. We walk to parades, or the library or the cheesy little carnivals downtown. My kids have favorite restaurants and favorite stores and favorite playgrounds. They go to school and take lessons and have a way more active social life than I’ve had since I was in high school.

I LOVE it.

I’m not someone who is ultra-motivated by nature. If I was still only responsible for myself (and my husband, I guess, although he’s not quite as helpless as children), I would spend a lot more time sleeping and feeling lonely. Kids don’t let you do that. They keep you up, they’re ALWAYS talking, they demand you go outside and see the world. You can’t avoid talking to anyone at the grocery store or wear ear buds all the time or even avoid smiling. I am nicer, friendlier and happier now that I have kids, and it has definitely made me a better person.

Last week after swim class, I took the kids to Panera for an early dinner and “special treat” for both being brave and learning new skills (Caroline can retrieve things from the bottom pool step, Evan learned how to do a sitting dive). I herded them into line where they both placed their orders with no help from me, then stormed the dessert counter to choose their cupcakes. The teenage girl behind the counter said “They’re so cute. I bet having kids is never boring.”

I smiled and said “No, I am never, ever bored.”

To celebrate the hilarious and heartfelt comedy Delivery Man, starring Vince Vaughn, being released Blu-ray, DVD and Digital HD March 25, BlogHer will be awarding to one of my readers a $100 Visa gift card.

To enter, just leave a comment telling me: How have your kids changed you for the better?

You can pre-order your copy of Delivery Man today or check out the Facebook page for more information on the film, which chronicles the story of a man who unexpectedly discovers he has 533 children. (And I thought just having a THIRD baby was a big deal!)

Sweepstakes Rules: No duplicate comments. You may receive (2) total entries by selecting from the following entry methods: Leave a comment in response to the sweepstakes prompt on this post Tweet (public message) about this promotion; including exactly the following unique term in your tweet message: “#SweepstakesEntry”; and leave the URL to that tweet in a comment on this post Blog about this promotion, including a disclosure that you are receiving a sweepstakes entry in exchange for writing the blog post, and leave the URL to that post in a comment on this post For those with no Twitter or blog, read the official rules to learn about an alternate form of entry. This giveaway is open to US Residents age 18 or older. Winner will be selected via random draw, and will be notified by e-mail. You have 72 hours to get back to me, otherwise a new winner will be selected. The Official Rules are available here. This sweepstakes runs from 3/20/14 – 4/19/14. Be sure to visit the Delivery Man page on BlogHer.com where you can read other bloggers’ reviews and find more chances to win!

My Week(170) in iPhone Photos

Sunday, February 2nd, 2014

It’s Superbowl Sunday! Wait, am I allowed to say the word “superbowl”? Or do I have to do the dancing around all the TV commercials do? Big game! Football day! Nationally eating stuff event! I do plan to eat all the stuff, although I’m lucky enough to be attending a party where someone else is doing all the cooking.

Sunday:

One in a set of about fifty

Watching Star Wars, obvs

They are sitting like that because that is how one sits when singing “Do You Want To Build A Snowman”.

Monday:

Dinosaur attack!

More dinosaurs at her 3 year well-baby

No idea what wore this kid out but he CRASHED

Tuesday:

It was 4 degrees but they insist on waiting outside for the bus

Fashionista

Their first trip to DQ

Wednesday:

Very cold twins

Patiently waiting to get in the pool

Visiting our lobster friends

Thursday:

She was happy (if cold) at 8:30 am

But when I picked her up at 11:30 she was HYSTERICAL and said her ear hurt. Poor baby was right and wins the award for the first Davis child to get an ear infection. She was back to normal after 24 hours of meds and luckily loves the taste of amoxicillin.

Attempt #2 at McDonald’s biscuits was failure #2

Friday:

She has an active imagination

Ugh. Even worse, I have to do federal taxes next.

Cuddles

Saturday:

Morning ballet…

…afternoon sing-a-long…

…evening bread hugging. Weirdos.

I am behind on literally everything I’m supposed to be doing right now, but I have high hopes I’ll be able to catch up this week. I also have some exciting weekend plans involving seeing some of my very favorite people in the world. Just keep your fingers crossed we don’t get a snowstorm late in the week that keeps me trapped at home and moping instead of once again eating all the things.

My Week(161) in iPhone Photos

Sunday, December 1st, 2013

Did lots of things. Am tired. Kids are tired. Zzzzzzzzzz.

Monday:

LOOK MY POPCORN CAUGHT FIRE. GET IT?

Trip #1 to the grocery store. We did buy cookies. We forgot a turkey.

Visiting their lobster friends. That’s what they call them. I don’t have the heart to explain those aren’t the same lobsters as last week.

Monday:

It was freezing on the pier but the sun (and all the happiness) warmed my cold heart.

My TV babysitter earned her paycheck this week.

Go buy this book. HILARIOUS.

Tuesday:

Real street fashion: scuffed boots and yoga pants.

Evan loves his Duplos and Caroline loves creepy naked dolls

I don’t know how she doesn’t have nightmares.

Wednesday:

RUN AND GET A TURKEY BEFORE THEY ARE GONE, SLACKER

They put extra ginger in the pumpkin pie <3

Making pies is exhausting.

Thursday:

It’s sparkling cider.

NO REALLY IT’S JUST CIDER I HAVE NO IDEA WHERE HE LEARNED THAT.

Thankful

Friday:

Instead of shopping, we visited our favorite places.

She met Santa.

Hot cocoa and a lollipop = best day ever

Watching the town tree lighting

Saturday:

They FINALLY built a playground at the zoo!

Those are yesterday’s lollipops they brought to the parade

Our local parade is adorable, if not very fancy.

Considering it was only 30 degrees all week, we spent a TON of time outside. My kids don’t care. They were born in New England*. Today Caroline took off her jacket and her hoodie and ran around in just a shirt. But despite the temps we had a really great week.

Now I am throwing myself FULL FORCE into Caroline’s birthday party. Luckily “princess” isn’t the most original theme, so just grabbing pink or sparkly or sparkly pink stuff is pretty easy. I just need to get my house in order so I can start putting things up before I buy yet another princess tent and realize I don’t have anywhere to put FOUR of them. Tomorrow I’m going to let her pick out the ugliest, most ridiculous princess cake we can find to order from ShopRite. I’m so excited.

*This logic fails since I was born in Massachusetts and I’m freezing.

A Frozen Adventure in NYC

Thursday, November 14th, 2013

Is it ironic that we’ve been so busy doing totally bloggable stuff that I haven’t actually blogged any of it? I need to get better about posting things sooner, since right now it looks like I’m going to put the kids Halloween photos up some time around Thanksgiving. Although at this point I’m mostly still updating the blog because it’s the only baby book I have, not because anyone is reading. When you almost never post it turns out all your readers get bored and wander away.

Maybe I’m also blogging because sometimes it still leads to super cool stuff, like an invitation to see the new Disney movie Frozen in NYC on Monday from Samsung and The Moms. I’m getting to be an expert at taking the kids into the city alone and they had Veterans Day off of school so of course I jumped at the chance.

We took the Metro-North into the city and got lucky with one of the fancy new trains. I plugged in my phone in our own private outlet and the kids played games on the tablet the whole way in.

I got a little bit lost on my walk from Grand Central to the theater, but it was a pretty nice day and the kids were happy to ride in the stroller. My arms are KILLING me from pushing that much weight around for an hour. I convinced them to get out and walk in the park, but then had to hustle them back into the stroller every time they saw a playground. And then we got held up when a construction foreman with an amazing Irish accent who wanted to chat with me and the gingers about Santa and how blessed I am to have redheads. It was actually not at all creepy or weird, and is exactly the sort of thing that always seems to happen to us and I love it.

We made it to the Samsung/Frozen event just in time to get some popcorn and give the kids a chance to try out the new Galaxy Tab 3 Kids Tablet. Caroline would have stayed out there playing all day if I hadn’t convinced her there was candy in my purse to eat during the movie. On our way in she practiced her step-and-repeat pose, for when she is famous some day.

She’s a paparazzi pro already

3D glasses in 2013 are way cooler than the blue/red ones I remember growing up.

This was the first movie I’ve seen in 3D where I actually wore my glasses the whole time. Even the kids liked it, and they usually take off their glasses within 30 seconds at the mini-theater at the aquarium. It made the already deep-looking (do you know what I mean by deep-looking?) animation pop right off the screen (and there wasn’t a ton of things flying out of the screen at my face, which is why I generally don’t like 3D). I was surprised Frozen was sort of a princess movie, since I hadn’t seen much marketing for it with that spin, but it was definitely the kid of princess movie even the anti-princess crowd can get on board with. It was easy to tell it was made by the same people as Tangled, but the snow and ice made it feel original. The music is sort of opera-like, with lots of talking-turns-into-singing and songs that really tell part of the story. I really, really liked it. I might take the kids to see it again when it’s released, especially because they both keep begging me to see the cute little Mickey Mouse mini-movie they played before the main feature again. Of course I like it a little extra because one of the two main characters is a ginger, but even if she wasn’t a ginger the story would be fresh, fun, and beautifully animated.

After the movie we stayed for the Q&A with Idina Menzel, where I couldn’t think of a single Q because I was too starstruck that she was in the same room. It was ok though, because there were plenty of NYC stage kids there who were THRILLED to ask her adorable questions about being on Broadway. And then she sang for us and I almost died. She’s so pretty.

After our event we met my friend Sara (Aunt Sara to the kids) to go to a giant candy store/restaurant but it was closed so we went to one of the many Greek diners where the menu is 40 pages long. Caroline ate a giant cheeseburger and Evan attempted to eat this giant doughnut but failed.

By then the kids were absolutely insane, hopped up on soda and sugar from their movie treats and exhausted from a busy day, so Sara walked us to Grand Central and we caught an old train home, which meant no charger for my dead phone. Luckily the people who made room for us to sit down were super nice and their 5 year old played with Evan and Caroline the whole time. We made it ALMOST all the way back to our house before Caroline fell asleep (Evan never did) so they slept like rocks and I lay on the couch and moaned about how old I am and how exhausting it is going to NYC alone with 2 kids. That’s not going to stop me from taking them back for Christmas stuff though – we still haven’t done FAO or the big Toys R Us or seen the tree or the Macy’s Santa. Having kids makes things like movies and Christmas way more fun.

Big thanks to Samsung, The Moms and Disney for the invite! We will happily come back for more movies any time! This is not a sponsored post, we just had a really good time.

Look At This Stuff, Isn’t It Neat? {GIVEAWAY!!!!!}

Saturday, September 21st, 2013

Please excuse the exclamation points and the fact that it is apparently giveaway week here on my blog (I haven’t done any in months and then BAM! THREE AT ONCE!) but I had to resort to Twitter begging for this one and I don’t regret it one bit.

How would you like to win THE LITTLE MERMAID Diamond Edition 2-Disc Blu-ray+DVD Combo Pack with Digital Copy? Oh, a whole bunch? That’s what I thought.

For the record, Caroline has never actually seen The Little Mermaid. My copy is on VHS (still have it though!) and our library doesn’t have a copy from the last release Disney did. They do, however, have The Little Mermaid 2, the prequel in which Ariel’s mother dies on screen and we’ve seen it one million times. We also have four different Ariel dolls and as of yesterday Caroline has started asking for an Ariel dress. which I will probably cave into and buy her immediately. Because how do you tell your tiny red-head toddler she can’t be the best of all the princesses? You can’t. Or at least I can’t. Maybe you’re dead inside.

Check out The Little Mermaid website, where you can watch clips and play games, including Ariel’s Dress-Up, which I definitely did NOT play on my own for 20 minutes last night. Nope.

To enter to win your very own Diamond Edition 2-Disc Blu-ray+DVD Combo Pack with Digital Copy: Leave a comment on this post. For inspiration, let me start… “Look at this stuff, isn’t it neat?” (YOUR TURN!)

Official stuff: 1 entry per eligible household, winner must be 18 or older and a resident of US or Canada (no PO Box, please). Giveaway ends October 3rd, winner will be drawn with Random.org. I get my own copy in exchange for hosting this giveaway, which is why I am doing it. It’s been in my Amazon cart for MONTHS and now I can exchange the movie for the mermaid dress-up set. All opinions are my own.