Today it is only in the 60’s and threatening to rain, but Monday was gorgeous so we went to the lake. The water was can’t-feel-your-toes freezing – almost as bad as the ocean this time of year – but the kids had a great time.

(Sidebar: The one zillion dollars I have spent on swim lessons so far is totally worth it for the peace of mind it brings me around the water. We’ll still be sporting those across-the-chest floaties for most of the summer, but the fact that both kids understand how to hold their breath, float on their back and get to the wall/shore means I can actually ENJOY going to the lake instead of freaking out the entire time about the very presence of water more than 1 inch deep. I plan to continue throwing money at our swim lessons all summer.)

We were not the only people there. Evan actually ran into a friend from school and that friend has some siblings/friends for Caroline plus their favorite baby-friend Baby Charlotte came too. I like this lake in May. by July it’s crowded and trashed (because it is free and has lots of parking and people are jerks) so we’ll be at the real shoreline beach with everyone else.

Late, so late, but Mother’s Day was spent planting and napping and today was spent at the lake enjoying our very first 80+ degree day of the year so I’m just patting myself on the back for getting it done and not decided 183 weeks straight is enough.

Sunday:

Hello New England, you look lovely from the air.

May the Fourth be with you!

Exhausted and swollen but shocked by how much I missed these kids.

Monday:

Yay Spring!

Caroline picked me flowers

Moe’s was as close as we got to celebrating Cinco de Mayo

Tuesday:

Preschool drop off shenanigans

Weirdo is obsessed with this basket

Evening family walk is my new favorite

Wednesday:

First of many non-stress tests for Baby #3

They’ve graduated to the deep end (with help) and it stresses me out

Who doesn’t love H&M?

Thursday:

Three going on sixteen

Not mad, just showing off the guns

Super happy Daddy is home

Friday:

Someone threw money in this statue which only has 2 inches of water in it. I made the gingers put it back after they fished it all out because it felt like…stealing? Ruining someone’s wish? I’m not even sure.

The best ice cream in Connecticut @Mystic Drawbridge

Green

Saturday:

Back in the hospital birthing center, my new home.

Humid weather gives her curls

The sky after the wedding I photographed

The beautiful, sunny weather for the past couple days means I’ve been carrying my camera around again to take pictures, so they’ll be a bunch of those to post this week. Probably. Or they all might end up living on my hard drive indefinitely because I’m too busy sorting and then editing the 1000+ photos I took at that wedding. Luckily I can do all of that sitting down, since being 30 weeks pregnant plus carrying extra amniotic fluid means doing anything for more than about 30 minutes straight is uncomfortable. So hurt. Much huge. Wow.

I made a bunch of flower crowns last week. It was surprisingly hard. And fake flowers are surprisingly expensive. And I spent a surprising amount of time worrying I was using too many apple blossoms vs. daffodils. Why didn’t I buy more fake peonies?!

Maybe I am missing the hipster gene necessary to craft (and wear) flower crowns. I will not be offering a tutorial for flower crowns, unless you are intentionally making ones that are badly proportioned and stick out funny and fit on no one’s head correctly.

Caroline cares zero percent that my crowns are weird looking and misshapen and the fake flowers keep falling off. She just thinks they make her a fairy princess, which is basically everything she wants in life. Besides a pony. She also wants a pony. If I can find a pony, I will totally get her one to ride around on while she wears a flower crown. Photo shoot perfection!

We went to find this nature sanctuary in Mystic where I am taking portraits (bridal portraits, eek!) next week. It was still a little brown but the light was swoon-worthy.

At like 5 pm last Friday I realized the weather report for the next WEEK looked crappy, so I dragged them out to the creek to play. It was a wise choice.

Fly, ginger fairy princess, fly!

p.s.  Something about adding captions screws up my photo alignment and it’s making me BONKERS. Apologies if it does the same to you.

This was not “Spring Break woo-hoo!” I don’t think I’ve ever been on a woo-hoo kind of Spring Break and I am definitely too old for it now. Plus my pregnant belly would totally get in the way during drunk limbo contests.

That doesn’t mean we didn’t have a wild and crazy trip to visit my parents in Virginia. Going to DC during cherry blossom season? AND while everyone is out of school? AND not bringing a stroller?? I live dangerously.

Before our trip into the city, we tried to make the best of some pretty bad spring weather. Our neighborhood is full of paved paths, playscapes and little creeks, so I had the bright idea to go play outside even though it was raining. I patted myself on the back for packing boots and raincoats, even though patting myself on the back never, ever ends well. After about 5 minutes poking rocks with sticks and looking for frogs it went from sort-of-drizzly to torrential-downpour. It was pretty clear our trickly little creek wasn’t going to stay cute and shallow for long, so we booked it home for some dry clothes and Disney movies.

The rain cleared out overnight but the sun came with lots of cold wind. I tried to keep the kids entertained inside but they were way too crazy. Bouncing off the furniture crazy. Tantrums over nothing crazy. Make me want to run away and leave them there forever crazy. So we bundled up and walked to the elementary school playground for them to burn off some of the crazy.

And that brings us to Thursday. THURSDAY. The day I realized just how much my oldest child is like me when it comes to crowds, being hungry, being tired and did I mention crowds? I hate crowds. HATE. And if crowds were bad enough, it was crowds of field trips, big families and strollers. So many strollers.

Personally, I am greatly enjoying having children at an age where we don’t HAVE to have a stroller. No diapers = no diaper bag = purse I can fit enough stuff in but it’s too heavy to carry all day + children who have seemingly endless energy = a math problem that defies all logic but means I didn’t bring a stroller into DC. I’m doomed to rejoin the Stroller Mafia in a few months and I still love/adore/worship/etc my Baby Jogger, but NOT dragging a stroller around makes me want to throw my arms in the air and shout “FREEEEDOOOOOOOOM!” It also makes me instantly intolerant of people with strollers who block aisles and hallways and walking paths and generally get in my damn way. It’s just one of the many ways I am not a very good person.

Luckily we planned our trip pretty well, catching a post-commuter-rush-but-still-early Metro into the city so we got to the Natural History Museum 30 minutes after they opened. All the good exhibits were crowded but not so crowded I couldn’t stand it. The kids got annoyed and hungry pretty fast though, so we went for lunch early. It was an excellent (lucky) choice, since when we LEFT the cafeteria the line to get it went all the way to the back entrance of the museum.

I do owe an apology and possibly an explanation for my child’s behavior during lunch to anyone who happened to be in the Natural History Museum last Thursday. I promise I did not actually beat Evan, spank Evan, hit Evan or torture him in any way. I did not tell him I hated him or he was an accident. I MAY have threatened to leave him with DC police after 20 straight minutes of crying, but at that point it wasn’t so much a threat as something I was actually considering. What caused such a huge disturbance in the force, you may ask? I didn’t let him carry his very own cafeteria tray.

Trust me, that was NOT a hill I was prepared to die on, and if I had known he really wanted a tray he could have had a damn tray. He just didn’t NEED a tray, so when we went through the line I said “No, we can share” and then breezed in to grab our food. By the time I realized he was sobbing silently behind me it was too late to go back for a tray and mine was too full to let him carry it on his own. TRAGEDY.

I made him stand in a corner for a while, but the judgey looks from other people got to me so I planted him in a seat at our table and eventually he calmed down enough that he actually ate most of his food, drank some Cherry Coke (DESPERATE MOTHER IS DESPERATE) and ate a dinosaur cookie. SHOCKINGLY, once he was no long hungry he perked right up and we enjoyed the rest of our visit. The crowds eventually got too bad to fight and the kids kept needing to sit down for breaks, so we left the museum to walk on the mall.

I was too sore already (stupid pregnancy sciatica) to make it to any of the monuments, but as soon as they were out in the fresh air and sunshine the gingers got a second wind and begged to ride the carousel. Their very generous grandmother said yes that I am confident it was the highlight of their day.

Based just on our pictures you can’t tell at all that it wasn’t a super fun trip, which is basically the foundation of blogging, right?

We only misplaced Creepy Baby ONCE for a few minutes in the rocks & stones hall. Thank God my mom realized it and we found her quickly.

We drove home Friday to discover E DIDN’T have to work all weekend, the weather in CT was at least as nice as in Virginia and that both children were totally exhausted from our trip. It was a lovely, relaxing Easter weekend with approximately 75% more sleeping and fewer tantrums. Apologies again to everyone in NoVa/DC/especially my parents.

We’ve had some snow this week. And then some more snow. And they’re predicting more snow (possibly the worst storm yet) for Sunday. I don’t hate snow or snow days or winter (part of the deal when you live in New England) but I am beginning to feel like moving to a tropical island would be a nice change of pace. I do this every year come February. E comes in from snowblowing the driveway and mentions there might be a job opening in Guam and I start thinking “I could totally handle living in Guam”.

To be clear, moving to Guam is not IMMINENT. It’s just…possible. And doesn’t sound so bad.

This week, despite the snow, was really fun. The kids had a bunch of snow days but we had nice weather in between so we could go out and  enjoy the snow. We made our first snowman while singing “Do you want to build a snowman?”, decorated him with the snowman kit Santa brought for Christmas and then named him Frosty. That’s like, three separate magical things all in one event. Plus the weather was nice enough to go to the park for an “Adorable children frolicking in an idyllic snow covered forest” photo session. It was more accurately  a”Snotty-faced children shaking all the trees and throwing snow on each other” photo session but we had a great time. The 37 degree air felt WARM and all that exercise in the woods wore the kids out so much they fell asleep at 5:30. It was a whole week full of the best parts about winter.

So now I’m officially ready for spring. Any time now, weather patterns. Get on it.