Agua

Izzy has started to say a few real words here and there (real meaning understandable to someone other than the immediate Lacroixs and something other than mama or dada)  Her first official word is (drum roll please) "agua".  Not only is it her first word, it is her favorite word, either that or she is just really thirsty all of the time.  Pretty much all day long now she toddles around the house either asking for agua or saying it while holding out her water bottle for you to take the agua back from her, or because what she really wants is a bowl full of agua to splash around in.  I must admit I take quite a bit of pride in the fact that my daughter's first word is water, although I am not sure what it says about us that it is in Spanish... 

The Huachucas

In a continuation of the whole get in lots o' fun while I can :)  we went camping in the Huachua Mountains last weekend with a bunch of families, mostly folks from Genevieve's school.  The girls had a lot of fun in the woods and our new tent finally got to get some use outside of our backyard.  We even got a nice cool rainstorm (which just happened to occur while we were putting up the tent but hey who doesn't like a challenge).

Izzy required constant vigilance... because she is decidedly a toddler now.

Evie wouldn't let me take any photos of her... this is the best I could get... Evie and the Cheese Poofs

Calm before the storm

This photo has almost nothing to do with post.... but it makes me happy and I am low on the good photos right now.

Each fall people who live where it is cold prep their homes for the winter (right, they do that don't they?) sealing doors, making sure the snow shovel is at hand.  I guess we do something similar to that here before the summer.... make sure you know where the kiddie pool is, spend the last few days in March when the temperature is just right outside....

Anyway I also found myself using a calm before a storm to prep and get my ducks in a row.  This anticipated storm is seasonal, of sorts, it is the start of the Fall semester.  This is going to be a Fall semester like none other so I am taking extra precautions, like actually putting caulk around the windows instead of just that weird saran-wrap stuff.  My foul weather isn't really foul at all, it is perhaps better described as intense.  My plan for this Fall is to take one class (watershed hydrology), continue my part-time (30 hours a week) work and study for and take my comprehensive exams.  Obviously (or maybe not) it is this last one that ups the whole intensity ante and I would be lying if I said I wasn't looking forward to it... because in my sick nerdy way I am.  But by god I need to be "prepared"  So over the last month I have been taking it extra easy and doing some life "weatherizing" in the hopes that it will make everything just a little bit less stressful.  (And here I have to give serious kudos to Patrick who, having lived through last fall and that stress, suggested the first two moves)  And yes the first three things taken together more than subsume my salary but if it allows me to thrive instead of just survive this fall by god it is worth it!

1) For the past three weeks I have had my groceries delivered to my door.  At first I thought only rich people did this.... but with some way to get free delivery every time it is all kinds of affordable.  Not to mention not having to spend an hour getting groceries with two grumpy kids makes this a borderline priceless option.  I gave myself 3 weeks to get in the groove with it and it now takes me t-minus 10 minutes to do all of my grocery shopping.

2) Accept the fact that I cannot work as hard as I want or need to and still pick up the girls both days at 3:30 because lets face it folks it is impossible for me to go back to work or studying at 7:45 pm when they are both in bed because I am ready to be in bed too.  Having accepted this fact we have decided to find a college student to pick the girls up for me three days a week, thus giving me 9 more hours each week to study and work.... nine whole hours!!

3) Embrace my inner slacker when it comes to housecleaning.  Well, OK I did this years ago, but all the same it is important to lowering my stress level.  This means if anyone wants to come over to our house it will have to be on Thursdays, because that is the day we have someone come by the house to clean.  And I may just need to buy extra undies for the whole household because I gaurntee laundry will not be completed in a timely fashion.

4) Work as hard as I can to make every moment I spend with the girls and with Patrick a quality moment.  Last week, for example, I was pretty darn tired and on my own because Patrick was working late and then went to exercise (two things he has needed to do all week) but irregardless decided to on a whim take Evie and Izzy to Peter Piper Pizza because it would be fun.  And you know what?  It was!  I think if I can make good on the idea of time together as always quality time, e.g., my e-mail is put away, no mindless web surfing, I will have gained an important skill irregardless, not to mention the immense satisfaction of time well spent with the people that matter the most.  (Don't worry Patrick this doesn't mean I will stop watching bad TV with you, because that really is quality time :)

Weekend of outings

On Saturday Evie and I went to a special Mars lander event/exhibit downtown, while Patrick stayed at home and  "helped" Izzy nap.   It was fun to go out to a nerdy science exhibit with just Evie so we could talk about the things she was seeing and she could spend 20 minutes dropping round objects into flour to make craters without the need to move on to keep it interesting for her little sister.  (We both learned a lot about craters, we can age them for you and give you some stats on which one came first... oh and dropping a tennis ball from on high makes a wonderful mess with the flour.  I also can now definitively tell you the difference between an asteroid, a meteor and and meteorite, something I always thought I knew, but by god now I know for sure). 

Then Sunday I took both girls to the Children's Museum while Patrick went into work for a few hours (I think he decided he "had" to work when he heard me promise to take Evie there... while it may be Evie's favorite place in Tucson I must admit that neither of us are terribly big fans... it is always chaos and just about the loudest place I can think of... and it always seems to bring out the worst in children... buuuut Evie loves it soooo much so we swap out every 4 months or so taking her.... and it was $2 science Sunday so I figured we really couldn't go wrong) 

This was Izzy's first time there as a mobile being and she enjoyed it quite a bit too. She spent most of her time on top of the "garden" (a cute little exhibit with three tiers of rows with spaces to put the fake veggies in) planting carrots in the rows and trying to figure out how she could get a peach wedged in the garden as well.  Although I do think she too was a bit overwhelmed by all of the noise and disheartened by the children who would just take things from her and unabashedly push her out of the way  (as a side note, I have decided one of the best ways to judge a kid is by how they treat the youngest of their kind....)  Unfortunately I didn't think to bring along a camera for the second outing, so Izzy's first of I am sure what will be many forays into the children's museum world will have to remain in our memories alone. :)

First Day of Kindergarten!

1st day of school picture by the front door.... remember Mom when you used to take these of Brendon and I?

How did we get to the point where Evie is at her first day of Kindergarten?  Is she really old enough for this?  I feel like it was just yesterday that I was feeling like she was "too" big because she was all of three and old enough to start at IST! 

Evie on her very first day at IST... so little and cute!

Well time keeps marching on and indeed today Genevieve began her formal school career.  I outfitted her with a new shirt and fancy new hippie (read not Disney) backpack and lunchbox and kind of brushed her hair (I offered, multiple times, to "do" her hair... she wisely refused) 

At 8:15 am Patrick, Izzy and I saw her off, and she was decidedly excited.  She is in the French class, taught by M. Drame and there are a whopping 8 kids in her class.  When asked about her first day she proclaimed that it was "wonderful, but Mommy you forgot my hat, sunscreen and art shirt"  (I was clearly so focused on the exciting new backpack that I neglected the details.)  After school today she went to her new "big kid" aka Kindergarten and 1st grade ballet class too so it was indeed an eventful day!

Investigator

There must be a word in the English language for someone who really enjoys figuring out how things go together.  A person (in this case of the little persuasion) who is fascinated by how the tops of things match on certain object and not on others, how things of different sizes sometimes fit inside and sometimes don't.  A matcher?  A toppist?  A space specialist?  Well regardless Isadora is one of those people.  She will sit for seemingly ridiculously long periods of time (i.e., 10 minutes, hey as a percent of her total life it is not insignificant) investigating the relationship between tops of objects and their bottoms.  Yesterday I gave her an empty milk jug and she put the top on, took it off, checked out the inside, put the top on, took the top off, looked for water to put in it (she is always looking for a way to incorporate water into everything she does), got angry when I took away the dog water dish, put the top on.... well you get the idea.  Now maybe this is a typical 1 year old behavior but I certainly don't remember Genevieve doing this.  Well, at least I certainly wasn't as fascinated by Genevieve doing this.  So important question (haha) is what sort of career does a Toppist have?  Perhaps she'll be the one to finally design a top for a portable coffee mug that it is impossible for me to lose!

Pippi Longstocking

This week was Evie's last week of camp before (gasp) she starts Kindergarten.  On Wednesday camp had a Halloween in August day and Evie wanted to dress up like Pippi Longstocking. Hooray for the library's books on tape for long rides to the cabin, I thought she was going to dress like a princess at every opportunity for the next decade!  She put together the costume by herself and insisted on adding the monkey for Mr. Nelson and the "horse"  I did the hair and makeup and must say I think it was my best attempt at doing her hair yet.  (Mind you the bar is set pretty low, see exhibit a and exhibit b)  Maybe there is hope for Izzy yet, that is of course assuming she gets more hair :)

NYC!

 

 Last weekend Patrick and I took a whirlwind trip to New York City to celebrate his sister's b-day.  We left early Friday morning and came back Sunday and probably slept a sum total of 6 hours the entire trip.  It was far from a relaxing get away from the kids but it was certainly a lot of fun.  I honestly cannot remember the last time I went to 4 different restaurants and/or bars in one evening, which some how for me is the marker of time well spent.  The highlights of the trip were an amazing wine bar owned by a friend of Vivian's (i.e., great food and wine at a pretty discounted price), going out to the Statute of Liberty and Ellis Island at 8 am after about 3 hours of sleep and way too much indulging in the discounted champagne the night before (see previous sentence), an amazing birthday dinner at a place fancy enough to have a madame pee pee, and finally (most importantly) getting to spend time with Patrick's sister and her fabulous friends.  I think it took both of us until about Wednesday to recover but by god it was worth it!

 

All dressed up for Vivian's Birthday..... Photo's courtesy of Patrick's phone :)