Year: 2016

The last of the “Ashton turns 5” series – his birthday party! I haven’t really thrown a big party for him since he turned 1 and 5 seemed like an worthy milestone age to go for it again. It was pretty easy to settle on a Lego theme – he loves them and the decorations were simple (squares and circles and primary colors). Or so I thought! I admit, I probably did too much work and spent too much money on this party But I had so many ideas and such fun doing it that I got carried away.

I found the invitations on Etsy (naturally):

It took forever, I’ll be honest. Folding all the tablecloths to different sizes and getting the color pattern evenly dispersed, gluing the plates on, etc. The good news is I have since posted it on the local facebook yardsale site (for free) and someone came to get it for their preschool!

* The tables: we had green and blue linens, I made giant legos by wrapping boxes and gluing spraypainted foam circles on top:

 And filled glass vases with some megablocks for the centerpieces.

* We had big printouts of Lego guys that we mounted on cardboard – here is Alex with the whole army before they went out:

* We cut out Emmett’s face for a photo op:

Ashton had helped me punch the circles and stick them on the bags with glue dots. The actual favors varied depending on the age of the child – everyone got things like fruit snacks, glow sticks, and a Lego lollipop, but the younger kids got a “Build a Magnet” kit, which was a Lego plate that I glued a magnet to and filled the bag with loose legos so they could assemble it themselves, and for the older kids that could follow instructions, a little kit that made a car or vehicle. By the end, kids had failed to notice that they had a bag specifically for them and were just grabbing them, so who knows who actually got what. Sigh. Oh also, every kid got a cute little Lego party bracelet when they arrived (also Etsy, duh 😉 )

* Had enough? I even put Legos in the hand sanitizer!

All I wanted was one nice family picture but it was the most hectic 2 hours and this is all I got at the end:

All about Ashton at age 5! Where to even begin??

Mainly Ashton is all about the questions these days. The questions are constant, the likes of which were fully illustrated not long ago in my tooth fairy post. (The latest doozy: “Where does the sun go when it sets?” Nothing is ever an easy answer!) But it’s really fun and funny (sometimes) because his questions/comments of course reveal how he thinks about the world. For example, our main shtick with dinnertime is that if he eats his chicken/pasta/whatever, he will be a member of the “Clean Plate Club” and he will be big and strong and able to touch the ceiling like Daddy. This idea seems to be very appealing to a five year old (and a two year old actually). Now after every meal they reach their hands in the air to see how much closer they are. Really, they do. It’s cute and heartbreaking. But the other day, after a playdate:

“_______ must not eat their dinner because every time I see them they are small.”

“Yep I guess. Some are big and some are small. And they have different eyeballs, different chairs, different houses and different hearts. But they better start eating if they don’t want to be small.” 

Speaking of eating, Ashton really only takes issue with peas. He doesn’t willingly eat a lot of things so there’s still some prodding, but he’ll try things when I ask and generally I don’t worry about him subsisting on air and crackers, which is the phase I’m in with Alex. I truly never thought I’d see the day where Ashton not only eats all his broccoli, he eats it first! 

Five years old has brought a lot more independence with things besides food but not in a bad way. He’s just his own little person now! Let’s dive in…

5 year old pedi appointment:  He did NOT want to go to the doctor, he was very worried about shots. He really kept fretting over it and I said, “How about we don’t go to the doctor, how about we go to the… pediatrician?” “What’s the pedia-matrician?” “Kind of like a doctor, but they tell you good news about how big you’ve gotten from eating all your dinner and give you a sticker AND maybe even a lollipop.” 
“Oh. What if they tell me I’m too big?”
I’m telling you, this kid and his doozies! We walked in and he said “Is this where I was born? No? How was I born then?”

Height: 46.25 inches (97th percentile)
Weight: 46.6 pounds (84th percentile)
Shots: None
Vision test: Pass
Hearing test: Pass
Family jewels: 2

Shoe size: 12
Clothes size: 5

Other goodies:
Favorite toys: Legos (Lego birthday party post is next) and his remote control (“remote co-no-trol”) monster truck for the backyard. 

Biggest obsession: his wallet, which is filled with expired gift cards and Chuck E. Cheese tokens. He carries it everywhere.

Favorite movie: Kung Fu Panda

Hero: Jason (obviously)

Little brother: “OW-wex”

Speech: As you can see by Alex’s name, not perfect when it comes to pronunciation and he lisps on certain sounds. But he chatters away, knows a zillion words and has full on conversations easily so it’s really just about the sounds, which I’m told are all still within the normal range for his age.

Allergies: He passed his peanut challenge this past winter and this fall we have almond, pistachio and hazelnut scheduled. Egg and sesame = still there.

What I love most about him: how, when he gets really excited/thrilled (like discovering something is eating our garden tomatoes and coming to tell me) or is waiting for something to happen (like to see if his monster truck will flip or watching me finish up a lego set) he jumps up and down a little. He just can’t contain the exhilaration.

First (and on-going) crush: Kayleigh, our 9 year old neighbor. He regularly hugs her and tells her he loves her, and even invited her to sleep over. When she asked “But where would I sleep?” he looked at her like the answer was so obvious: “With me, in my bed!”

Things that make him cry: not a lot. If he works particularly hard on something and Alex wrecks it, or if he really gets hurt, but even then I have him walking it off after a good hug. He’s generally very tough. He did cry when I told him we needed to go to the doctor to get the infected splinter out of his foot. I couldn’t get it and he looked at me and said “It is going to hurt?” and I told him honestly: “Yes.” And he cried. That was a hard truth to tell 😦

Recent skills: learning to swim! He can sputter and splash his way from one end of the pool to the other without a floatie. It’s not pretty, but he does it! More importantly to me, he’s not scared to try. He really does everything – he bodysurfed and let the waves crash over him in the ocean for a solid week during vacation (still need to post on that!), he picks up bugs, traverses the monkey bars, jumps off things that are higher than I would prefer, scooters and rides his bike over roots, rocks and steps to see what will knock him off, and even tried salmon. 

Would rather do anything than: make Santa mad

Stops everything when he hears: Shut Up and Dance with Me, Sugar, or Uptown Funk. 

To describe Ashton in one word (by me): Explorer
To describe Ashton in one word (by Jason): Active
To further describe Ashton in more words (by me, because one never cuts it): An optimistic, kind little boy with lots of friends and a general sense of what’s right and important and what’s not. He’s adventurous but also gentle and his teachers and anyone who watches him say he’s just so good.  I’m really, really proud of him.

Biggest challenge: getting a decent picture of this amazing, nearly 4 foot tall human being. Seriously it’s impossible.

Up next: TK with Mrs. Cooney starting Sept 7! No kindergarten just yet- the cut off date is August 31 so he will be the youngest or almost-youngest in his class. In Natick they go from 8:30-2:41 pm with one short recess. While I know Ashton could keep up academically, in my heart I’m just not ready to send him to school 5 days a week to sit at a desk for 8 hours. I’ve yet to hear any stories where a child being held back was detrimental so we’ve decided to do just that. If things drastically change, we can send him straight to first grade after this year as kindergarten isn’t mandatory in MA.

What he did on his birthday, August 3rd: 8/3 was kind of a lead up day to his big party on 8/5. They had slushies at camp, but Jason had to work so we didn’t really have a special dinner and we didn’t sing Happy Birthday. The kids (Ashton, Alex and Kayleigh, who is over a lot) had hot dogs outside per Ashton’s request, then popsicles and then opened a couple of presents.

Nothing compared to that whoopee cushion, which I picked up at the last minute. I mean, they all laughed so hard for so long.

Potty humor is always a hit.

Alex had a difficult time in that it wasn’t his birthday (“Me! I…TWO! MY bir-day, ME!”) and cried a lot when Ashton had presents and he didn’t. Ashton got annoyed and I overheard him say “OW-wex! Stop it! You only get two birthdays a year and this one isn’t one of yours! It’s one of mine!”

I object to two birthdays a year only because they are already growing up too fast. Five year picture attempts in all their glory!

We love you Ashton!!

So let’s see. We have one full bathroom on the main floor of our house. It is quite small but nonetheless I am very happy to have it! It works really well for guests (the guest bedroom is on the main floor also) and I like that it is located kind of out of the way/in a private spot. When we moved in, it looked like this.

Very plain, VERY white. The floor tile also left a little to be desired and the grout was a dingy tan.

Because this space is pretty small, I thought it would be nice to have a glass shower, one that would open things up a bit because there are no windows. Realistically, something like this:

I also thought, if we are taking out the tub and making the shower space smaller, we could squeeze in some built-in storage on one side:

Jason and I have lived first in a condo, then in a house in Watertown, and now in Natick, and we have had a bathroom in all three places that is this style. Beadboard is a nice upgrade for how easy it is to install (easy for Jason I mean. NOT me. Can you imagine?? I have zero interest in learning how to use tools. Or the grill.)

Step 4. This step actually was me though. Gulp. The tile floor. We knew we were not going to pull the tiles up and were told we could not reglaze them. We briefly considered going right over it with new tile but the toilet had already been replaced and it was too complicated. I bought a Miracle Grout Pen thingy at Lowe’s and started painting.

After

Sink corner before:

After:

After:

 Thanks for the memories little downstairs bathroom! Those new colors sure look good on you! 🙂

This is just a quick little happy birthday shoutout to my first born…Ashton, you are FIVE today! And you love everything in the whole world except peas. Peas are very distressing for you. Other than that, you are the most excitable, curious, energetic, wondrous little boy and we love you so much!!

I’m behind on blogging because we’ve been on vacation (forthcoming post on that), we have spent a lot of time re-doing our downstairs bathroom (forthcoming post on that too) in time for Ashton’s big 5th birthday party, two days from now (forthcoming post on that too (too)).

Another quick one…HAPPY BIRTHDAY ASHTON!! Be back soon!

It all started on June 1. We had 5 cubic yards of loam/soil/whatever delivered for various projects around the exterior of the house. And by delivered I mean dumped in the middle of the driveway. Here it is, in all its little-boy-magnet glory.

Yep, this was great to have. Just great. Trying to keep Ashton and Alex off this heap was so exhausting I not only gave up but handed them their shovels.

The hell with it.

So this dirt went everywhere, including (of course) in the house – my favorite place for it. But also in the yard. Jason and Ashton seeded the entire backyard and front lawn in about 6 hours. The owners before us had two big dogs whose pee really did a number on the grass. There were big bald spots. So Jason got that growing and it is thicker and greener than ever! I don’t have a before and after on that yet. I better get one soon, we are a week into a mandatory water ban in Natick due to some sort of equipment failure – everything is fading fast despite Jason’s illicit midnight watering.

Besides that, we I mean Jason has been swapping out the pre-existing red mulch with brown and edging certain areas with stone. A la:

Vs.

There’s lot of little areas where we I mean Jason did that and it looks really nice.

We definitely wanted to start a garden too. The “before before before” of the area we picked, which is right next to our side door and underneath our dining area windows:

The “before before” after we yanked all that out.

It’s like the Hunger Games in there and they haven’t even hit their prime yet! Our first harvest was a banana pepper a couple of weeks ago.

Growing these things is a waste of space if you want my opinion. You can’t eat them raw and they cost about $0.12 at the store if you actually need one to cook with. But there are about zero recipes in my repertoire that call for banana peppers so it’s like, what’s the point.  Anyway, Ashton proudly carried it around for a couple hours, it sat in the basket and then went soft and I threw it away.

And then this week, we got another useless pepper but also a zucchini! Look at Alex’s technique:

But the zucchini, ohhh the zucchini. Jason sauteed it up and the boys ate it all for dinner! They were so excited to have helped grow something that it was gobbled up with abandon and they asked for more!

Well here we are everyone! A little over 3 months since kitchen demo day and our kitchen is finally complete! This has been my first major renovation and even on the scale of things, this wasn’t that major. We were fully functional in the new space after just 2 weeks because we did not change any walls or plumbing; keeping the footprint of the original kitchen definitely helped in terms of budget and timeline.

So as not to repeat myself, here is the post where I outline why we did this project to begin with. The kitchen wasn’t our taste and we were going to be dealing with an appliance issue right quick. Also, one of the major aesthetic things I was looking for was to have the cabinets go all the way to the ceiling. Turns out, our floors and our ceiling are nearly 2″ off from corner to corner (read: VERY uneven) so our contractor had an insane time trying to get everything level (it’s not 100% perfect, but totally fine). The fact that he finished it in 2 weeks is, frankly, unheard of.

Why, then, did this post take so long? Well, the backsplash tile had an 8-10 week lead time (of course it did! I have a knack for picking the most inconvenient things). When it finally came, the installer told us we actually needed an additional 5 square feet before he would start. We rushed the order, but that was another 3-4 weeks! It finally went in last weekend. Also, there was a lot of additional custom trim work that needed to be done (if anyone lands here because they search the internet for Home Depot/Martha Stewart purestyle cabinets, contact me before using them! I have many-o-pieces of advice on this product).

Overall, it’s done and I LOVE IT! It’s clean, fresh and (I hope) classic. The gray/white scheme is very in right now.  Let’s get to the before and afters, shall we? 🙂

Before 

After

Before

After 

Before- side desk area

After

Before

After

Before

After

The whole room

 (Notice the ridiculous contraption on the bottom of the stool – it’s called a KaBoost and it’s because a certain 2 year old, I won’t name names, refuses to sit in a clip-on high chair or any sort of booster- chair only!)

And lastly just a few of my beloved backsplash tile that was so worth the wait!

The pictures don’t even do it justice. The flowers are raised so the relief on the tile reflects the light ever so slightly, and the glossy blue is just soooo bee-yoooooo-tee-ful!

This tile is easily my favorite part of this whole thing. Second is the countertops and third is my pendant lights.

We went with Jenn-Air for appliances, the combo oven/convection-microwave oven is awesome. Two weeks ago, I had made a chicken/broccoli/pasta thing for the boys. Everything in it was cooked, so I took it out of the fridge around 4:30 pm and slid it in the oven. I said, “Hey Oven, in about an hour at 5:45 pm, start up. First preheat to 375, then cook for 30 minutes, and then just keep it warm at 200 until we get back.” We left the house, went swimming at WTB, came home at 6:30 pm and dinner was READY! Boy did I feel like I had life under control in that moment. (My biggest challenge is finding time to make dinner – I have limited time after work and it’s a struggle to balance it between playing/scootering/going to the beach/etc with Ashton and Alex but then having time left over to cook a real dinner for them that takes at least 30 minutes). It’s been a little funny getting used to our induction cooktop as well but I love how easily it wipes clean and how fast it boils water! We don’t have a gas line on our street so it was basically electric or induction.

I think I mentioned at some point our cabinets were Martha Stewart- Ox Hill style in Picket Fence. Oh and I chose this line of cabinet hardware, blue counter stools from Target…overall there was a lot to pick! Anyone that has been through a renovation will tell you it is very stressful, for a whole lot of reasons. Looking at the after pictures, it was so worth all of it!

Now, what’s next…?

My poor little blog has been all alone lately! We’ve been out and about having crazy wild times and I am now back to share all the juicy details! (Just kidding, there’s really nothing too out of the ordinary coming up ha ha.)

We packed up and took a little sojourn to Long Island for 4th of July weekend. Our official summer vacation there will be the last week in July, but we were ready for a change of scenery and some beach time. We spent a 3 days there with Grandma, Grandpa, Uncle Chris and Aunt Lizzie and Cousin Owen and it mostly looked like this.

We came back early on Monday July 4th because Jason had to work. He had to work BECAUSE I surprised him with a trip to Block Island for his 39th birthday (July 6). We actually went down on July 5 and stayed overnight. BY OURSELVES. I was willing to overlook missing the fireworks due to the promise of a kid-free 36 hours beginning the next day. Jen came at 8 am on Tuesday morning off we went.

How was it? The best word I can think of to describe it is: light. We were so relaxed! For starters, we only packed what we could fit in the back of our beach chairs (plus a very full cooler with lots of adult drinks 🙂 ). This was my pile:

That’s it! That’s all I had to pack! To give you an idea of what I didn’t have to pack: kids’ bathing suits, rash guards, shorts, tee shirts, pajamas, sweatshirts, shoes, diapers (overnight, regular and swim), wipes, towels, toothbrushes, monitors, lotion, hats, sunscreen, toys, snacks, sippy cups, nightlights, booster seat, pillows, stuffed puppies and the list goes ON.

It was a very rainy morning and I was a little distressed about the weather, I’m not going to lie.

We got to the ferry around 11:30 am and the minute we walked off the boat and onto BI, the clouds parted and the sun came out.

And then we stayed at the beach ALL DAY. Like, until 7 pm!! We did switch beaches in the middle of the afternoon but just because we could! I didn’t have to worry about any kids being hungry, thirsty, tired, hot, or sandy. No one needed my assistance to dig a hole and I didn’t have to play lifeguard. It was glorious. Dinner and drinks were in front of the most beautiful sunset outside at the Surf Hotel, and then we were the first people back on the beach at 8 am the next morning. Our ferry home was at 12 pm after a solid 24 hour getaway. It was sunny and perfect the whole time 🙂

Case in point: we got home that afternoon and celebrated Jason’s birthday dinner outside (Alex’s favorite-upon-favorite thing to do lately is eat outside. I think it’s because it’s his longest sentence that we understand. He’ll say “I wan ea ot dog ow-tide mommy! I wan ea ow-tide!” [Translation: “I want eat hot dog outside! I want eat outside!” – as you know, he’s in speech therapy haha.]

ANYWAY, we had dinner and dessert outside and the boys pitched a FIT when they saw Jason’s candles (there were 3). Jason divvied them up so everyone could have one.

And then we sang: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f04V_lYBxjM
Can you believe Ashton? That attitude is exactly why we went to BI without him 😉

Natick keeps getting better and better. As we begin our first summer season here, I can’t believe how much there is to do. Not that I am out there doing any of it, because once I found Wayland Town Beach (WTB) there was nothing else I needed in life. The weather has been phenomenal the past couple of weeks and the boys and I can be found there almost every day. Alex is my little fish and he just floats and floats.

Last year’s preschool graduation was a much more comprehensive post than this one will be. You know, with it being Ashton’s first ceremony/certificate/all that 🙂 This year followed the same format in terms of parent breakfast, then concert, then the actual graduation.

Last night I put him in pajamas that are a size 5 and his wrists and ankles were showing! He is taller than pretty much every other kid in his class and lately Jason and I can’t believe our eyes at how big he is, the things he says, etc. I hardly pick him up anymore because he’s too heavy! Besides that, there’s really no place he needs to be carried 😦  Luckily I still have Alex, who is Mr. “I want UP!” all the time.

Ashton can do so much on his own now, it’s frightening. BUT, he is still just 4. I think I mentioned we are holding him back and he will start TK (transitional kindergarten) this fall at his same school. He has done great there and I’m confident it is the right decision. But considering Alex is starting a toddler program and we still have Jen, the 2016-2017 school year is shaping up to be our most expensive yet! What are your thoughts on a bake sale? Or maybe I can go through the basement to see what we could sell. Sort of kidding, sort of not. 

One last shot of our recent grad…

And we move on! June has been good so far – we “fished” for minnows at Wayland Town Beach (which is going to fulfill all the sun/sand/water needs of the season), Jason had 5 cubic yards of soil delivered to seed our lawn and make our garden (a very exciting highlight that I am still cleaning up after), the hose is out in full force, we have popsicles after dinner, ride our bikes, hunt for bugs and generally play play play! Oh, and Jason set up a huge golf net on our screened in porch. He got the boys real clubs too! Just what I need. 

Summer, here we come…!!

By now, most people have heard the story about the three year old boy that slipped into the gorilla enclosure over Memorial Day weekend at the Cincinnati Zoo. The gorilla was shot and killed in order to protect the boy. I admit I am obsessed with this story. I have spent a fair amount of time reading articles and skimming through some of the thousands of comments. Comments that blame the mother for letting the child slip away from her and therefore want to hold her accountable for the gorilla’s death. Comments that say we can’t possibly blame the mother. Comments that think the zoo could have done something differently or that the gorilla’s behavior was misinterpreted as aggressive. The comments are accompanied by nasty criticisms too, like the mom is overweight, black and has too many kids so she’s probably on welfare. They should call CPS on her! Clearly she can’t take care of her children. Criticisms like the father also has kids with other women and has a long record – what an upstanding citizen (not)! As if that has anything to do with it. But everyone is arguing with each other over which way the finger should be pointed. It’s parents vs. non-parents, rich vs. poor, black vs. white.

There has also been a general escalation of issues that goes beyond what happened at the zoo. For example, look how many people signed a petition to hold the mother responsible for what happened. Why has everyone banded together so fiercely over an animal when there are children in our country that are beaten, starved, neglected and hardly noticed? They are innocent, just like the gorilla, and the masses hardly go to bat for their safety and well-being. And while we are on Harambe, we shouldn’t keep animals in zoos in the first place! THAT’S the real problem!

And on. and on. One commenter stated that the zookeepers missed when they shot Harambe (they should have shot the mother). !!! It’s fascinating to me, and horrifying. Here’s why.

Earlier this spring I took the boys to a playground for a quick meet up with friends. The playground is part of a larger park that has baseball fields, basketball courts, etc. So, a very large area and it was tee-ball opening day, so there were kids and parents everywhere, festivities, a parade, etc. The street was packed with cars and the play structures were overcrowded with kids. I stood to the side chatting with two friends while I kept one eye on Ashton and one eye on Alex. At one point, Alex crawled up into a tube and remained there (or so I assumed because I saw him go in and he hadn’t come out).

Then a couple of minutes later, out of the corner of my eye, I spied Alex’s red and white striped shirt approaching me from the opposite direction of where I thought he was. I had not seen him leave the tube and I remember thinking “Huh, where did you come from? Weren’t you in the tube?” It was fleeting and I scooped him up in my arms and continued to chat.

A few minutes had passed when a woman came up to me. She pointed at Alex, who I was still holding. “Is this your son?” she asked me. I told her yes. She said, “Did you know he was just out in the middle of the street?”

I couldn’t even reply. I squeaked out a “No, I didn’t! Oh my god…” and she proceeded to tell me that he had wandered out into the road (there were no gates), she had seen him and stopped her car. Hadn’t I heard all the honking? She said she was grateful that the other drivers behind her didn’t try and go around her  – they might not have seen him.

The conversation went on but I was speechless and honestly in disbelief. There was nothing I could say. The truth was that I thought I knew where my son was, I stopped paying attention for a split second, and he escaped me. The woman was very nice about it – she seemed to understand that my horror was probably punishment enough. To this day I still shake a little when I think that Alex could have been hit by a car. I was really, really lucky.

Then this happened with the gorilla. That could have been any parent, anywhere. Little kids are sneaky, fast, and have no sense of danger or consequence. What if Alex had wandered into the street and caused a car accident? And someone died? That’s akin to what happened with Harambe. Would I be sued for negligence? Would I be the one responsible for the death of that person? What if it wasn’t Alex that ran into the road but a dog who escaped his owner? Would it be the owner’s fault?

So I admit, I have been following this story very closely, wondering what would happen. Today at 1 pm, the announcement:

And all I felt was relief. Thank GOD. The event at the zoo was a sad, terrible accident. An endangered animal was killed and it’s awful, but I’m glad she won’t be held responsible. She has stood enough judgment. I imagine people saying about me what they said about her and it makes me sick to my stomach. I happened to get lucky with Alex and I will never forget it.