FOURTH OF JULY

I tried to make watching fireworks happen this year, I really did. I was super motivated because Sloane is at an age where she can appreciate (or be scared of?) the wonder that is fireworks and I was telling her all about it and we were yelling, 'fireworks!' 'fireworks!' over and over again to each other in the car, but then the ones that we were going to go see on Thursday night got cancelled because of the rain. Then we made a valiant attempt on Saturday night for the rescheduled show, but we didn't make it until dark. We did, however, visit the Blue Bee Cider brewery in the old Manchester district in the meanwhile, took in some good cider and hup hupped around the parking lot until we left.  

Sloane reeeally wanted to try some of the cider and used every ounce of charm that she has to try to get me to let her have some. At one point she kept saying that she just wanted to smell it, and so would take a really deep sniff and then look at me with sparkly eyes and a big smile that was all, 'come on, mom, just a sip?'

This large parking lot (?) space in front of the brewery had great views of the city skyline and is just the sort of space that I imagine would be the perfect location to practice all my street dancing moves with my street dancing friends. This is what Step Up, the movie, all four of them, has taught me.  And if you too are interested in B-level (C-level?) movies about dancing, Step Up 5 (yes, FIVE!) called, 'Step Up All In' is coming out this August. It looks TERRIBLE, but I have been known to watch worse. Anything that has any sort of dancing + dance competition + comeback story in it, I'm in.

This whole weekend was a good one.  I got a lot of work done and  we even got to see some family who came into town. At the end of these weekends, Sloane and I like to snuggle in the armchair together and recount all the things we did, usually in the form of a story that I tell about a girl named Sloane who has a mommy and a papa and a dog named Rusty....we both love these stories.

SLOANE AT 23 MONTH

 

While I was getting ready one morning, I handed her a wet wipe to keep her busy. She loves wiping things down and cleaning them.  She was in the middle of wiping down her teapot when I told her we were going downstairs. "Let's go, Sloane." 

"Waaaait!" She squealed.  "I put trash!"  She scrunched up the wipe in her hand and then ran to throw it in the trash can. And then yelled, "I'm coming!" as she ran to me.  

As we were walking down the stairs, she asked, "Rusty did it?" pointing to the hole in the carpet. 

"Yes, rusty did it." 

"Where papa go?" she said as soon as we got downstairs. "He's upstairs." I said. "Sleeping?" She asked. "Yeah, sleeping."

"Read it?" she asked holding up a paper brochure from Omaha Steaks. "Yeah, go ahead and read it" I say.  "No, Mommy read it. Mommy's turn." 

"I wanna do it!" she yelled when I tried to help her peel her banana. And then, "trash" she says as she picks up a peel that fell on the floor and puts it in the trash. 

She took pieces of egg on the tray and lined them up in a line. "Look, choo choo train!" 

"I want to see zebra!" she said. While eating her breakfast she had noticed a zebra print on my shirt. "Hi zebra! Hi zebra!" 

"Mommy, I wanna count." she said, point to the owl feet on her shirt. "Okay, how many feet does owl have?" "One, two ...feet!" she says, counting. 

"Morning, Rusty" she said to Rusty when he sauntered downstairs. 

After she finished eating, "Here you go, mommy!" she said, handing me her plate. 

I took these photos of Sloane last week after the pool and while we were watching Ken play volleyball. This 23 months old, she knows how to play. And I am the luckiest person in the world because right now, I am her favorite playmate. At 23 months old, she is constantly blowing my mind with how much she comprehends, having strong preferences for the clothes she wears, counting to 10, reading letters everywhere she sees them, repeating everything we say, trying hard to tell me about her day, supremely excellent at giving hugs and kisses, recognizing the sounds of piano and violin, using the toilet at daycare, grabbing my hands to check out my nail polish when I've painted them, pointing out that Rusty's food bowl is empty and refilling it, beginning to understand what disobedience is, beginning to love being at the pool, remembering people's names, loving all her animals, trying to copy our workouts in the garage, and constantly delighting her parents with her antics.

That feeling of watching her run to me with her face lit with joy and her fists clenched in excitement, is one I keep trying to stuff into a bottle to keep forever.  

This is probably going to be the last month that I'm counting. Don't fret - if you were getting ready to fret - this blog will continue to be inundated with photos and updates about this little one, but once she is two I will abide by the standards of counting by years and telling stories in other formats. I was reflecting on this earlier and telling Ken about it, that this extensive recording and retelling of my pregnancy and Sloane's first years of life was and will continue to be primarily for my sanity and self-discovery, more than for anything else. It's my first time as a mom so I've never encountered a 1 week old, 5 month old, 23 month old as a mom, and my way of dealing with it was and is to write about it. That's how I do! This sort of orderly count and record by month - for both my pregnancy and these more recent two years- always reminded me to keep things in perspective, savor the small stuff and be grateful for the radical revelations of being a mom to this precious being. 

HAPPY JULY!!

My MIL was out shopping with Sloane this past weekend and while they were perusing, Sloane apparently held up a grey v-neck shirt and said, 'Mommy?' as in, 'This is obviously Mommy's shirt because this soo looks like something she would wear.' My MIL bought the shirt for Sloane and here we are, rocking our grey v-necks. 

Happy JULY, everyone ! This is my favorite month of the year because one, it is my birthday month, and two, this month represents the epitome of summer to me. I like being on the other side of the coldest month of the year and reveling in the long summer days. Plus, Fourth of July is coming up and I think we are going to (finally) to find some fireworks this year!  Here's to hoping this month goes nice and slow..

II'LL SAY IT AGAIN, SUMMER WEEKENDS ARE THE BEST

First things first. On Friday morning while I was cooking up some breakfast I turned around and saw this scene happening: Ken and Sloane watching Beyoncé videos, in order to - according to Ken - 'get inspired'.  We had a wedding that night  and apparently Beyoncé was going to make sure we were properly motivated for the dance floor. 

And what a night it was! I lost count of the number of times Ken and I said, 'what a weekend!' to each other, and this was on Saturday night, even before the weekend was over. For our viewing pleasure, I'm just going to relay some of weekend, according to my handy iPhone. The iPhone was front and center in capturing things like: a beautiful wedding at Main Street train station, reunion with old friends, lamplighter coffee, Blanchard's Dark and Dark coffee ice cream (my favorite right now), Catan with the boys, a sweet Sunday morning at church, bowls and bowls of watermelon after pool and volleyball, and lots of play time and nap time with my baby girl.  

Not pictured: Hours of non-stop dancing. Also, the MVP of the weekend, Ken's mom, with whom Sloane had the best time while her parents were doing said dancing.     

Hey and while we are at it, let me throw in some photos from last week too: paleo bread, Hardywood's Bourbon Cru, Black Sheep with Soonie and her fiancé, and pool and volleyball every Sunday.  

BUTTERFLY GARDEN AT LEWIS GINTER

 

When I was in the 7th grade, I moved from the town of Tenafly, NJ, where I was having a good ole' quintessential childhood of playing outside until dark and having crushes on the appropriate boys, to moving across the globe to Seoul, South Korea, where my parents are from. There is tons to say about what that experience was like but for brevity's sake let's just say it shook my world - in hindsight, for the better - and it became a big part of who I am. In the moment though, it was a big culture shock and for a 12 year old it was a sort of tragedy. In order to acclimate us to the Korean schools we would be attending, my parents put us in this summer program where they taught kids like us who had lived abroad and were now trying to acclimate to the motherland, how to survive it all. We learned the language and culture and I remember this all being mostly awkward and only vaguely helpful, but this is where I met Soonie, Mary and Janie. Soonie was from Utah, Mary from California and Janie was from Australia. We were all in that similar situation of becoming teenagers and having identity crisises and trying to learn how to live in this completely new world; it's not surprising that they became my lifelines during the time that I was there. 

Fast forward 18 years later, we have all kept in touch here and there and I still get to see Soonie occasionally because she lives in DC. This past weekend she came down to Richmond with her fiancé, who I had never met before, and we caught up, ate, sweated, played with the baby and ate some more. 

Saturday afternoon we went to visit the butterfly exhibit at the Lewis Botanical Gardens. It was a sweaty experience (the place where they keep the butterflies is extra warm) and it was also thrilling to see all those different kinds of butterflies fluttering around. I'm pretty sure Sloane's mind was blown. First of all, she got a butterfly stamp on her hand before we went in and she is still talking about it.  She also got to see butterflies eating pineapples and then there was a frog outside in the pond- a real life frog! You should see me and Ken when we are doing these things with her; it's hard to tell if the parents or the child is more excited. It is just so fun showing her things, you know?

Afterwards we were all so hot, we pilgramaged to the splash pad area of the gardens where water spouts were aplenty and Sloane and I got soaking wet in our regular clothes. It felt great to be dried off by the sun on our walk back to the car. 

At one point that afternoon I looked back and saw my middle school friend from Korea and her fiancé holding hands with my daughter and walking through the gardens in a city that I never imagined I would be living in, and I did some quiet marveling about how life moves forward with such vigor.  I'd like to float on these moments of marvel and keep up with being present through it all; it is thrilling.