Holiday Cheer!

Baby, it's COLD outside! School is out for the rest of the year, and we have been housebound for two days now, after a well-intended but quickly aborted attempt to remain outside for the 10 minutes it would have taken to add on a few candy cane lights to the driveway. The kids stood outside for about 3 minutes and then marched their triple layered, hat-wearing, glove-toting little bodies into the laundry room, from which they announced they were not coming back out again.
Hence, we played school with every single stuffed animal they own:
(btw, those that were "fighting" are lined up near the couch... Um..guys? How often does this happen in real school??)

Then we did an awesome craft:
(btw, you may think of it as an inconsistency, but I see it as sheer artistic genius: note that all four seasons happily coexist in this friendly village-on-the-lake)

And all this, in the happiest holiday-est mood. Merry Christmas to all!

Angels we have heard on high...

Vasco's enthusiasm is... well.. divine :)

'Tis the season to be.. tipsy?

While no doubt it is the season to be the kind of tipsy one associated with bucketfulls of spiked cider, gallons of mulled wine and various warm merry beverages that leave you.. well.. tipsy, it is a different kind of tipsy that we are talking about here.

Sat. Dec 6: 10am. We set out on a mission to purchase the first live christmas tree since the kids were born. Ready for the fabulous smell of real pine trees, we head out: the kids are entirely not sure whether we have finally lost our minds when we assure them that we will bring back the christmas tree strapped to the top of our car. Convinced that the whole world has indeed gone mad, they sipped hot chocolate while the helpful people at the tree lot did exactly as we promised: strapped the tree to the roof of the car.
Once home, millions of pine needles sloughing off as we dragged the tree in, we dusted out the old tree stand and plopped the tree in. Vacuumed 4 pounds of needles. A frenzy of decorating later and half a vacuum bag more of tree needles, and we had a presentable tree.
It even snowed briefly at dinnertime, to finish creating the perfect "I'm dreaming of a white christmas" atmosphere. Books were read under the tree, a christmas carol thrown in for good measure, and happy kids were sent to bed. Happier adults stirred up something called a Hot Russian Christmas with an extra shot of vodka for good measure and settled down downstairs in front of a lovely roaring first fire of the season to watch a silly movie. Spirits flowed and spirits were high, and as Mike was trying to poke at the fire to put it out, I climb happily upstairs to find this:
Atwinkling still, it was indeed a sight to see.. I took a picture and brought it for Mike to see, handing him the camera as I said I hoped he had a sense of humor.

A few sawed branches later.....

.. and a concoction of weights, props, and counterweights, the tree is up again, 7 extra pounds of needles have been vacuumed up, crushed ornaments replaced, water mopped up, and merriment restored!

Happy Holidays!

Ahoy, Pilgrims!

Work, work, work, work... mostly the reason for the lack of updates. But biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression aside, on Friday evening, Nov 21, I updated projection #321 and shut down the computer, turned on the out-of-office reply, and packed 6 days of clothes for 4 people into a suitcase in a half (thank you very much!). Sunny Caribbean here we come! And it was sunny! And it was warm!! And everyone loved the "big boat"! This is a Thanksgiving tradition we can definitely get used to.
We were thankful for being there together (all 17 of us), for the sun, for the outstanding service on the ship, for bunk beds, for the mint chocolates on the pillow every night, for the children's program, for the endless refills of ice cream (as Justine set a personal if not world record on dropping her ice cream every single time within 2 minutes of getting it), for the dolphin we got to play with in Cozumel, for the immense jacuzzis, for the spectacular afternoon on a beach in Costa Maya where the water glistened, the seven kids constructed some sort of aqueduct on the beach, and the adults drank beer. Did I mention the warm sun?

Exhausted Parents' Rant Against Standard Time (EPRAST)

Let's take a trip back in history, shall we? Circa 5 years before kids. End of daylight savings time? No prob. In fact, an event not unanticipated with some degree of hope: the magical extra hour of sleep, combined (at least for some time) with not waking up to such complete darkness every morning.

Let's now shake off those memories and come back to today: the official end of daylight savings time. It goes something like this:
5:23 am. Vasco cheerily walks into our bedroom. I sob (my turn to get up with the kids today), and try to convince Vasco it is still the middle of the night (it feels like it!!! it looks like it!!), and Mike bravely walks him back to his bed. Mike returns in a few minutes, sanz Vasco, and a delicous quietness settles in, which makes me drool from excitement as I fall -- no, plummet! --back to sleep.
6:33 am. "Mommy?" I fall out of bed, decide against the extra effort of grabbing my glasses, and stumble-run-Elaine-dance over to the kids' room and flop myself on Vasco's bed. "Honey, 10 more minutes and you can get up." The stealthy surprise attack must have confused him for a few minutes (which I gratefully use to happily sleep-drool on his stuffed animals I am cleverly using as a pillow!), but then he recovers: "Mommy, can I get up?" I ask, desperation and hope intricately mixed in my voice: "You are not sleepy? There is no way you are falling back asleep?"... 2 minutes later we are in the kitchen, pouring cereal. As I set the clocks back on various timers in the kitchen, back to 6:59 am, I quietly weep.
What follows is a list of what transpired next: baking a cake layer (tomorrow is Mike's birthday), cartoons, Sunday school, a long run (me), hardware store trip, lunch, random tree/bush climbing, a long run (Mike), my pure genius potato stamp crafts (which would have been much more successful had we not run out of paint to dip them in 3 weeks ago!), run to the store for eggs, second cake layer baked. Club houses constructed from dining room chairs and blankets, the destruction of the couch, and an apparent relocation of every single book from the bookcase.

I look at the clock: it winks and it mocks me: 3:15???!!! ARE YOU KIDDING????!!!

At 5:10pm, as we are already enveloped in midnight-quality darkness, I am making dinner as Mike prepares our "comfort juice" (aka Mike's homemade ROCKING margaritas).

So here I am at 6:15, said dinner and margarita consumed, sharing a rant, and half-laughing, half-sobbing at Mike's attempt at humor: "Okay, kids, only 69 minutes till bath time".

Happy Halloween!

The kids have been going full force since 7:14am...and I am not kidding.. fell asleep as soon as I turned the lights off in their room. 14 hours of Halloween! :)

Financial Markets, High School, and Pumpkins

Yipes! It's been too long to even try to catch up... Financial crises have been keeping me busy at work, as our division is shrinking even as work is tripling..Today I witnessed the following conversation:

Boss 1: "I need her to work on my project for today and tomorrow full time!"
Boss 2: "But... (to me) how much more time do you need to finish my project?"
Me: "Ummm.... 40 minutes?"
Boss 2: "Can I have 40 minutes between today and tomorrow?"
Boss 1: "I guess.... but only 40 minutes!"
Boss 1 and Boss 2: "Maybe we can split her in two! Ha ha ha!"
Boss 2: "But I want the right hand! Ha ha ha!"
Me: "Help!"

And its not that I am so irreplaceable, it's just that 1) we are so crazy short-staffed, and 2) the world has gone so completely crazy. Our projections seem to have a shelf-life of exactly 243 minutes lately.

But back to the conversation that made me log on today.
We have since graduated to separate baths (which is a separate story), so while I was giving Justine her bath, the following conversation transpired:
J: "I'm going to be in Kindergarten next?"
Me: "Yes, but next year: now it's winter, then it will be spring, then summer, and only then it will be time for Kindergarten"
J: "Why?"
Me: "Because you need to be 5 to go to Kindergarten."
J: "Oh. I'm going to be 5 in Kindergarten, and 6 in first grade?"
Me: (totally impressed at her sequential ordering skills) "Yes!"
J: "And then high school?"
Me: (fainting at the concept of Justine in high school): "Um... let's not rush that yet!!"
J: "But where is high school? Long drive?"

It seems like yesterday that they were learning to walk! Today they say goodbye to me by the car at the curb as they run into school all by themselves, with their friends, and their school lunches, and their grown up language and goofy jokes (Vasco's favorite is "Why did the cookie go to the hospital?" you should ask him some time). Luckily I still get a giant juicy smack-on-the-lips kiss before they run off, but I suspect that by the time they make it to high school that will no longer be cool...

***

Banitsa

Given the enormous amounts of Bulgarian feta cheese (sirene/сирене) consumed during our vacation, we needed to wean ourselves from it ever so slowly. So, despite stuffing my face with banitsa practically until they were closing the doors on the plane (Cabin crew, cross-check doors and lady in 4B, stop with the cheese already!!!), we had to just whip up another batch.
Here is the pictorial:

You'll need:

1) 4 eggs, 1 teaspoon baking powder, 6 oz of plain yogurt (eye of 4-year old optional)

Beat the eggs in a largish bowl. Beat the baking powder into the yogurt, holding the yogurt container over the bowl with the eggs, because the yogurt will start to seep over. Add yogurt to egg mixture.

2) 1 stick of butter or margarine, half a cup of flour, and 8-10 oz of Bulgarian feta cheese.

Melt butter, crumble the cheese. Save about 1 tablespoon of butter, and then add remaining butter, cheese, and flour to the egg and yogurt mixture. It should look something like this... The cheese should be lumpy.


3) 1 package of phyllo dough, that has been sitting at room temperature for about 30 min (if it is too cold, the sheets will not separate properly).

Separate each sheet of phyllo dough, spread a tiny amount of the reserved butter, and then spread a few tablespoons of the filling near the top of the sheet (see demonstration on the right by my lovely assistants). Then roll the sheet up, and place in a baking pan. If you have a round one, you can get all fancy and make concentric circles (click here for an example). Spread the rest of the butter on top.



Bake at 375 degrees, for about 25 minutes, until it looks nice and crispy.

Usually eaten for breakfast, but there are no rules.

First Day of Pre-K! EEEK AAAAAAAAAAAAAK

I CANNOT believe our little babies are going to school!

We went to an open house on Friday, so that we bring all the supplies, see the classroom and meet their teacher:



And today we actually had to drop them off. At school. Can you believe it? :) They actually did really well: there was no crying when we left. I, on the other hand could barely hold it together. And then Mike made me drive to work by myself :) All this time when I was hoping and wishing for a day when I would have a quiet drive to work without having to referee 72 fights in the back seat over the course of 20 minutes... it was quiet all right... and today I wished it were not.. :) But all went well. Pre-K. I can't believe it!

We were on Vacation!

I'd like to blame the delay in posting to the technical difficulties I experienced with my awesome slideshow last night, but that would only account for half a day of the delay. We spend 2 and half very relaxing weeks in Bulgaria, and came back over 2 weeks ago ! In the meantime, our bag was hopelessly lost and miraculously recovered, we have had cement trucks in the driveway and climbed over construction workers and through a hole in the fence to get to work while our driveway and drink-wine-at-night side porch was being built. And now Vasco appears to have croup. Which, he is dealing with with a totally angelic disposition, even though he can't stop coughing. And he melted my heart this morning when I said "Vasco, I'm so sorry you have this cough", and he replied "It's okay, mommy".
Anyway, my slideshow is cooperating. Enjoy! Part I:

Part II:

One.. two.. three.. FOUR! Happy Birthday, Kiddos!

The kids are overtired and hopped up on icing. The presents have been unwrapped, the candles blown out, said icing has been hosed off. Twice. Justine is singing "Happy Birthday" to Vasco in bed. They have come a long way from the teeny tiny way-too-early babies that they were (pictures and NICU journey), and they amaze us every single day.

Speaking of amazing, remember how we discovered that 3 was not the magical age, but the magic is scheduled to start at 4- 4 and a half-ish? Well, you decide for yourself, but literally 3 minutes after they blew out their candles, the following highly mysterious things happened:
1) they spontaneously and neatly arranged the entire pile of books on the bookcase
2) they cleared out a space for their new toys, and neatly arranged the new toys in the cubbies.
3) they got undressed for a bath on the first request, and made sure all the clothes were in the laundry basket
4) in order to go take a bath, they went straight to the bathroom. As opposed to running naked past the bathroom into the living room, twice around the kitchen and back right past the bathroom into the bedroom.

I'd write more, but I'm going to go celebrate this magical new universe with a glass of wine (and my Spanish homework) (normally it is tequila that helps my Spanish along, but it IS a school night after all!) :)

A Long Long Long Weekend (Happy 4th of July!)

One trip through the crowds in downtown DC. One hour-long paddle-boat trip around the Tidal Basin, complete with chasing flocks of geese through the water. One 4th of July BBQ, complete with Irish and Greek dancing. Haircuts and a quick private tour of a local fire station. A 4 and a half hour 5th of July BBQ. Lots and lots of running from the rain. All by Saturday night.
On Sunday I anticipated that we would 1) not be able to top the excitement of the previous two days, and 2) have to design some activities. Cool activity number one: craft project with sticky tape animals and my awesome rendition of a zoo, complete with waterfalls, a pond, slides (!!) for the animals, and an occasional cage. And coconut trees.


However, despite our bests efforts, the SUNDAY-AFTERNOON-BOREDOM set in... And no, those are not address labels. They are "boy-earrings for the face". Okay?
Guitar lessons started this Wednesday. Which, of course, adds two child-sized rental guitars to the mule-load of stuff we drag through the tunnel to the garage every Wednesday night: stuffed animals, remnants of half-eaten snacks, new snacks that I use to lure them to the car, backpacks, etc.. The guitars make super great picture props:

.. And this is how they sound... :) I'm hoping there will be an "after" video, where our angelic guitar duet will deftly strum out "Born to Be Wild"..

Beer, coffee, and vitamins..

8:20am. Vasco's sitting on the step and I'm helping him put his shoes on, and I'm trying to multitask: one hand on his shoes, one hand swiping around for my shoes, all while I'm chewing my multivitamin (have I mentioned that I am awesome at multitasking: I can chew and put shoes on at the SAME time!). Vasco: "Mom, when I grow up, I want that (pointing to the remnants in my mouth). I want beer, coffee, and vitamins." I'm really glad he added vitamins to the mix!
And, on a related but separate theme, I know that Mike and I enjoy a cocktail or a glass of wine or two every so often, but when your kids are playing imaginary tea-party with strawberry daiquiris, it makes you wonder...Funny part, now that I think about it, is that I've never made a strawberry daiquiri. I would have been less surprised if it were a margarita-on-the-rocks-with salt party. They also seem to know about the Statue of Liberty (never been there, never discussed it!), the EXACT text of about 59 books (today I had the audacity to say "workbench" instead of "workroom" while I was reading and was severely reprimanded), can find the "author" of a book on the back cover, eagerly ask how to say words in either Spanish or Bulgarian, and are about to take guitar (pronounced kitar) lessons with Mr. Kevin next week.

We have been enjoying summer...

... the zoo, with their cousins...


..and, in other news, I am a DOMESTIC GODDESS! or at least worshipped as a minor god by Mike's colleagues, whom I supply with fancily decorated cupcakes. This one came from Family Circle magazine. I was practicing making these, which I plan to make for the kids to take to school to celebrate their birthday with their friends.

"You can't eat ONLY vegetables for dinner!"

What? That's what happens when Dad is left in charge. Ivanna went to happy hour with some colleagues from work so I was in charge of dinner. Pasta and vegetables. Our crazy kids, however, prefer to eat huge servings of peas and mixed vegetables than pasta. I suppose its good that the kids don't always listen to me. At least they didn't put corn up their noses.

Bye Bye Nebulizer!

After over 2 years of daily Pulmicort treatments for Justine, we have been given the okay to stop them!!!
I just read four Dr. Seuss books, so here is the summary:

All through the winter all day and all night
not a cough nor a wheeze did Justine have to fight
So we went to see Cathy at Children's to say,
"Please take that misty machine far away!"
Said Cathy, after checking a few lungs and a ear,
"I think that the time to stop it is near!
"You must wait till the end of cold and flu season",
and that, my dear friends, is a very good reason!
So today, on this very last day of May,
We did one more treatment and then said "Hurray!"

I got moves..

What do you call two kids that LOVE hotels? Vasco and Justine! (Crazy part is that they can even find the room by looking at room numbers now, while dragging their rollaway backpacks like little tiny cute travelers!) We were off for a weekend at Hershey Park. Here's what was planned: kids dreamily drift off to sleep on pull-out couch, mom and dad share bottle of wine in other room, watching a movie, eating chocolate, and holding hands. Here's what happened: we set up pull-out couch, kids put pajamas on while running around the room in mad circles, brushed teeth, then ate bananas in a crazed shark-feeding type frenzy, re-brushed teeth, went to bathroom, jumped on couch, squealed with excitement that we were in a hotel, went to bathroom again, and took another 30 minutes to actually fall asleep after we managed to miraculously keep them in bed without having to sit on them. That was probably 10:45pm.. We high-fived each other, thinking that that MUST mean that the kids will sleep in. Right.... At 5:59am (NOT kidding!): "Is it time to get up?" I bolt out of bed and as coherently as possible at that hour explain that the park is NOT, I repeat, IS NOT, open yet! At 7am, the kids were wide awake. Moves, here we come! ("Moves" are what Justine calls the rides, because, well, they DO move).



A lot of fun was had by all.

* * *

On an entirely different topic, my adventures in decorating cupcakes were surprisingly successful, and earned high complements from the kids.



(the idea was courtesy of an article in Redbook magazine)

Vasco, upon finishing up the last one, "Mama, let's make more!"
Me: "okay, we can make some more this weekend. Maybe we'll make different bugs: bees, maybe?"
Vasco: "Yeah!!!! More! This weekend! Bees, mama? Bees? and maybe cockroaches?"
Me: (incoherent snorting)

The Future, through Vasco's Eyes

"When I grow up, I want to drink coffee. And beer. And when I grow up, I can touch sharp things!"

When he puts it that way, how can one not appreciate anew the joys of being an adult! Especially the sharp objects! I'm going to go play with knives now, but before I do, I leave you with a ... lullabye....

Never let corn husks down the disposal and other useful tips

Yes, indeed, never let corn husks down the garbage disposal, no matter how small and innocent of a piece you may think it is. They have evil powers. Evil, I tell you. On the other hand, it's a great couples bonding exercise: on account of practically rubbing my hands raw and bruising my knuckles pulling out strand by strand of wicked corn husk rope (they should use this material in space shuttles, parachutes, and bungee cords if you ask me), Mike took over valiantly, and we cheered each other along rather joyously with every new strand that we pulled out of the disposal. Current status: it drains but doesn't grind. I'll take what I can get.

Other useful tips:

• Always shred important documents, and try to involve the whole family. Besides teaching important lessons such as how to prevent identity theft, it is a great activity for those you've-tried-every-other-activity-under-the-sun-and-
  the-kids-are-still-bored days :)
  
  

• Never ever accidentally press weird buttons on your new camera (keep all fingers under control at all times). Otherwise you will somehow mangle the recording of your daughter's very first ballet recital, reducing it to a microscopic-sized window. :( However, the pictures turned out nice, so here is the slideshow :)

• While tending to infant and toddler twins may be somewhat time-consuming, try to mulch, weed and pay some minimum attention to azalea bushes every 3 years or so! .. ours were on the verge of death, until I took 2 days off last summer to try to revive them. Miraculously, they did this this year:
  
  

And, finally, the merry-go-round!