One, Two...34

Today is my birthday!! I celebrated yesterday with Chase, Ryder, and Turner because I wanted to celebrate with my boys and today I am jet-setting to Key West with Todd for some much needed R&R. Today is a great day. I am OK turning 34, in fact I have no qualms at all with adding another tally next to my years. Sometimes I forget how old I am. Someone will ask my age and I will have to think before I answer. I am not sure if this is a sign of aging or a Freudian act of denial. Sometimes, I think I am in my twenties and wonder who is responsible for the three young kids running wild only to discover a decade has passed and those kids are in fact mine! Sometimes, I feel so tired and achy I think I am well beyond my actual years. Most days, no matter what I am feeling, I am blown away at how quickly it all happens. 21 years ago I became a Bat Mitzvah. 16 years ago I graduated from high school and 12 years ago from college. To quantify the years since these milestones is what makes it so astonishing. All of it seems like just a few years ago, it is amazing how quickly you go from one and two to thirty four. Now, I have three young boys whose aging and growth will transform the passing of time into even more of a raceway. Age really is just a number. And I welcome a new number because that is what is supposed to happen. If you are not aging you are not alive and if you are livin' then it does not feel much like aging anyway. So, Happy Birthday to me, until next year!!

Celebrating with my boys

Blowing out the Candles



Celebrating 34 at the airport!

My boys on my Birthday!

Everything but the Kitchen Sink....

Yesterday we gathered to celebrate my birthday. Nothing fancy, but since Todd and I will be away for my 34th we got the family together for a BBQ and cake. As usual, it was nice being with everyone.
For me, I had everything I needed: my husband, my sons, my sister and niece (though Jay and Delaney were, sadly, absent,) my parents, my mother-in-law, and even my brother was there hanging out! I had everything I needed but the kitchen sink, literally.
That's right, about 20 minutes after everyone arrived our garbage disposal regurgitated the parts of the tomato that did not make it to the salad and left us with a clogged sink. Three inches of water and a disgusting mix of floating, disposed food particles is how our sink currently exists. The drain guy, because indeed there is a guy for everything, should be here this afternoon.
The past 24 hours have brought new meaning to the phrase "Everything but the kitchen sink.". Life is much more difficult than I could have ever anticipated; like when you lose use of your dominant thumb. Even using paper plates, the dishes are collecting. We are storing them, food covered and all, in the dishwasher to be rinsed and washed when the sink returns to working condition.
Though a pile of dirty dishes is beyond frustrating, the inconvenience has really come to us by way of bottles and sippy cups. Washing them in the bathroom sink, the same place we spit out our toothpaste, has a rustic element I have never quite experienced.

Oooh gotta go, the drain guy is here. And, just for the record, the drain guy is not the plumber. Who knew!!

Naptime

Today is Sunday. Today is also the fourth consecutive day of Chase and Ryder napping in their beds. It has been wonderful and has made for better children, well, most of the time.
After 6 months of car napping, if there was a nap, we were noticing recently that though the much needed downtime for me was nice, the boys were waking up as cranky as if there had been no nap at all. Perhaps they had a crink in their neck from sleeping with their chin on their chest. So, no longer pregnant and somewhat used to having three kids, I decided to try and transfer them. If they transfered...great! If not, I would deal with the long, cranky afternoon, though not necessarily gracefully.
Well, four days in and we are batting 1000.
Though Chase wakes up during the transfer, will ask for his covers, and for some music, he has yet to get out of bed before falling back to sleep. Ryder transfers no problem.
Until they voluntarily get into bed and take a nap I won't claim total victory, but for now, this one small success feels good!

Cousins- A follow up!!

On New Years Day all of the cousins gathered for our annual belated Hanukkah party. At the time I was one week away from my delivery date of who we now know as Turner. My cousin, Miriam, was 6 weeks away from her delivery with who we now know as Manny. The picture then was of us, pregnant with our mutual third born. Here is the follow up picture, the boys at 7 and 12 weeks celebrating their first Borscht and Keklentin.

There are a lot of coincidences involved including the fact that both boys names are characters on Handy Manny. Of course, it takes being a mom to young kids, particularly boys, to know that!

Rollin'

Turner has started rolling over. It's only been a few times, but truth is he does not get a lot of time to practice from the confines of his infant seat. The first time was at playgroup last week. We were all sitting at Ellen's simultaneosuly watching the bigger kids run amuck and the newborns lay and look cute. Turner was on his belly cooing and smiling. We were watching as he sat up on his elbows, head raised proud. He was trying to roll, he would lift his leg, then lift his arm, trying to use a combination of gravity and momentum. Then he did it, and we all applauded this milestone.
Since then he has rolled a few times. He always tries, when his mother allows him an opportunity, to go from back to belly or belly to back. He has a cheering squad in his brothers and me. We root him on with a "Go, Turner, Go" and an applause at every success, no matter how small and inconsistent!

Castle Playground

They sure don't make playgrounds like they used to. When we were kids, the playgrounds we loved were small and metal. Monkey bars, straight slides, and swings on chains were all we had and all we needed. We loved it in its simplicity. If and when we needed an extra boost, we would jump off of the seat from the swings apex.
Today playgrounds are right out of The Jetsons. It's almost not worth going if the ground is not rubber, if the slides do not twist, and if the playsets are not made of some durable, weather-resistant plastic. Some are even beyond that, and such was the case last week when we went to Doylestown's Kids Castle Playground. We had heard the talk of the playground "worth the trip," "best playground around," "too big to do alone with the kids," and decided to venture there to check it out for ourselves when Todd took off from work to spend the day with the kids during their spring break. We found all the talk to be true. The castle, which is a huge wooden climbing structure, was only part of what made this playground great. There was a maze, boardwalks, make-pretend shops, including a bank, a library, a movie theater with popcorn, and others. Our boys spent most of their time in the sandbox, building sandcastles, which is wonderful practice for this summer. We hit the swings, climbed the castle, built sandcastles, and had ice cream. Yea, I would say it's worth the trip.