{i hear that}

i've had all of these thoughts so often-

yep, about sleepovers, and huge college classes, oh-and swim parties, too,

but tammy took the time to write them down, 

so take a visit to tammy's blog

for what could more or less have been written by me.

tammy's son aiden is almost the exact same hearing age as m. 

their implants got turned on 9 days from each other!

do you...

(via)

do you pinterest yet?

it's so fun

(i do.)

(and then i do some more. it's addicting!)

but 

it isn't just a time suck;

it also helps me organize and keep track of thing i stumble onto online & want to remember.
it's like an online visual bulletin board.

come join the party!

rewinding a bit

oh goodness, life is just hurtling along.

this morning as i was attempting (and failing) to sleep just a bit longer {failing because as of 6 am a wide-awake 3 year old had hijacked the other side of the bed and was forcibly sharing my pillow}, i thought about how full the last month or so has been. and the month before that. and so on...

somehow the days pass so much more quickly than i have time to post these days. so, a little bit of a rewind over the last month, starting with our pre-emptive mother's day celebration. matt planned a day full of fun on friday of mother's day weekend, since we celebrated his mom on saturday and my mom on sunday. he had already spoiled me with a pretty letterpress card every day that week. it was a busy weekend! my favorite is when he makes all the plans and i get to just go along for the ride...

we hoped into the car for our secret adventure,

and true to matt form, 

i never could've guessed how our day would unfold:

 the tow reasons i get to celebrate mother's day in the first place

we started out in our own city...matt pulled over at a random industrial looking building that

surprise! houses a vietnamese bakery. 

{driving up to it, it reminded me of when i was in grad school; our grad studios were in an industrial warehouse full of different businesses. on the floor above my studio there was a bakery that made muffins to be packaged up and sold at different places (like trader joe's.) there was no signage, just a big open industrial looking space with racks and racks of muffins cooling and mixers the size of a smart car. if you wandered in with a little cash (i think it was $1.50) and a hungry look on your face, someone in an apron would come over and make the trade-your cash for a black market muffin. 

but i digress...}

 i stayed in the car with the girls and matt emerged with a bag full of massive croissants 

 notice, the croissant is larger than my hand.

 breakfast in hand, we drove to our first destination...

an hour or so later we pulled up to

a goat farm!

why would matt think i'd want to go to a goat farm?

because i love love love goat cheese, 

and at this awesome spot

you can sample tons of goat cheese. 

pretty much my heaven.

 these little snuggly goats are only 4 days old!

 m sneaking a peek at the baby goats

 ruby was a little cold

 look at that little smile.

 her toothless grin kills me

 ruby takes a turn watching the baby goats

 there are a couple of llamas at the farm too

the girls played pretend with the wooden kid sized dining set while i went inside and sampled lots of goat cheese:

 (via)

 after loading up on goat cheese, we headed into the town of pescadero where we window shopped & went to duarte's for some lunch & a piece of their famous pie

we accidentally ate all the pie before i could get a picture

with full bellies, we piled into the car and headed home with a stop off in half moon bay to drop in on the store that m's teacher and her husband own and then back to oakland for naptime!

matt's parents arrived that afternoon, so we had babysitters for a night out!

matt gave me a little mother's day gift of cuteness that i could wear for our dinner out -

(cute, right? i'd admired them on my friend jennifer, whose nice husband got them for her, 

and matt tracked them down with her help.)

once the girls were down, we headed out to a surprise location for dinner!

matt picked plum,

a newish oakland restaurant that stays open super late.

we realized it was the first time we'd been out just the two of us in a very long time; 

i loved it.

(via)

(via)

we sat right here, at the bar, and got to watch them prepare all of the food.

the food was all so delicate and intentional and pretty.

(although some dishes were better than others)

our favorite part?

the desserts-they were amazing.

over dinner matt had me share the ways i think i'm a good mom,

so it was fun to think about the things i love about mothering my girls.

all in all it was a fabulous day,

followed up by a little actual mother's day celebrating with a movie on sunday night!

(we saw the movie win win, which was great)

hooray for treats, goats, adventures, shoes, yummy food, and most of all, 

hooray for my little family that i love from here to the sky.

i wish

this was an awesome post, full of wisdom and wit.

BUT. it probably won't be.

i'm so exhausted. i have been working around the clock (ah- yes, when you drive my my house at 2 am, that would be me sitting at our dining room table, hunched over a little painting- feel free to wave hello) to get 5 cards done for papyrus by june 1st.

(here is a sample of the mid-way stages of three of the card designs i am painting. 

some are closer than others...)

meanwhile, my left tear duct has decided to go on strike, so my left eye is all swollen and puffy, which makes me look even more tired. (also, it is irritating- not like the annoying kind of irritating, but the painful kind.)

i'm so out of shape, and had kind of stopped going to the gym. instead i decided to do some workout dvd's when the girls were asleep. do you watch the biggest loser? i don't- i've never even watched one episode. but i needed a dvd that would kick my butt & that i could squeeze in during the day. so i bought a jillian michael's dvd (in case you don't know, she's been a trainer on the biggest loser.) first of all, i've never been skinny, but i used to work out a lot- cardio, yoga, strength training. even when i was preggers with m i would work out an hour a day-up until the day i gave birth. but i've sort of slid off of the exercise bandwagon and even though i've gone on lots of walks, etc. i never go to the gym anymore. the point of why i am telling you all of this, is that one 20 minute workout dvd is kicking. my. butt.

and really, more than my kicking my butt? my quads are killing. ouch. (but that's good, right?)

so all in all, on this lovely friday, i am a tired, puffy eyed, sore wreck.

so happy it is the weekend.

cocktails & cupcakes

can't get enough of this little one

and can't get over how she was born a whole year ago!

last night we had a couple of friends and family over to toast a year of ruby

 & we had cocktails (i know, shocking) to celebrate surviving a year of parenting two kids,

and ruby got her very own cupcake.

 

suffice it to say, she loved her birthday treats! 

it was only a teeny two bite cupcake, so she wanted more, more, more!

she cried when i took the cake stand full of cupcakes away from her.

my little munchkin & me

(one!)

it seems like m was just turning one!

and now, somehow,

miraculously

she is three (three!)

and 

today little ruby

who didn't even used to be here

and was just an idea

a possibility

a potential

is one whole year old.

i can hardly believe it's been a year!

i'm not gonna lie- two kids has been a whole lot harder than i imagined; 

i think matt and i are still trying to figure out what two children means for logistics, division of labor, schedules, free time, etc.

that said, i absolutely adore our sweet, joyful, snugglebug ruby.

she is the first person m wants to see every morning,

and the sound of their laughter and playtimes melts me every time.

i am trying to savor the moments that i know will be gone all too soon- the way she lays her head on my shoulder when she's tired, her little looks up at me while she nurses, the way she delicately plucks cheerios off her food tray and then stuffs them in her mouth, the way she just wants to be held pretty much all the time.

dear ruby,
i love you from here all the way to the deep blue sky. i love how you add the sound of more laughter to our house. i love your little body snuggled into mine. i love the way you watch everything your big sister does with a half smile of anticipation on your face. i love love love you.
love, mommy

why yes, it *is* a rap about cochlear implants

way back when m was just a baby, and she didn't have her cochlear implants yet, my little brother aaron would often take her on walks or babysit her. when he hung out with her, he would sing to her, even though she couldn't hear him with her hearing aids; he made up this awesome rap about her bionic ears. it was back in the days when we were fighting our insurance for her surgery, and hoping that someday she would hear something. i always begged him to record it for posterity sake, but it never quite worked out.

two months ago, when we had m's hearing birthday party, uncle aaron pulled out his bionic ears rap and performed it for us! (my favorite thing is that for weeks after m would talk about how she had bionic ears, and she would sing snippets of the song.)

the video may not be the best quality, but here, in all his glory, is uncle aaron debuting his ode to m's cochlear implants:

this was me

a year ago

tomorrow ruby 

turns ONE!

crazy.

six words.

here is my cute mom with my cute baby-

spotted this the other day on nytimes.com & love it!

what would your six word momoir be?

(explain your mother, someone else’s mother or motherhood in general in just six words)


here is mine:
clothe, feed, comfort, wash, snuggle, repeat.

happy monday!

it has been a really busy week, with lots to post about! 

plenty of peaceful moments like this with my girls 

(one reason i love nursing is that i can stop and sit, 

one reason i hate nursing is that i have to stop and sit), 

and lots of activity last week and in the week ahead: multiple mother's day celebrations, teacher appreciation week at m's school that i helped out with, a fun out of town visitor, five freelance deadlines for papyrus, an art grant deadline...

this morning i am savoring the last day with my dear friend daphne, who is visiting from michigan. more glimpses of the week to come!

just thinking a lot about nursing as ruby approaches one a week from tomorrow! (crazy, right!)
for the moms who have breastfed-how long did you nurse? did you have a complex relationship with nursing like i do, and love it sometimes and not so much love it other times?

he's my favorite

he's my favorite,

and he will be,

even when he is old.

april 30th is matt's birthday.

he likes to gloat that he is younger than me (but only by 3 months and 2 weeks, my friends!)

since one of our favorite things to do is eat, we made a fancy birthday dinner.

that's right,

we didn't go out to eat, 

we made it at home,

and i even made a pretty little menu.

(the girls semi-cooperated with us. they have been a little squirrely at bedtime lately. 

luckily we spent most of the day (and friday night) prepping so that we could eat soon after they went down.)

matt got us started with some delicious (and very strong) drinks.

mixmaster at work:

creatures of the sea? not for me.

but hey, it wasn't my birthday, so he got to pick and execute much of the menu.

matt gets into these little rascals, 

so he went to town on some oysters for an appetizer.

i can't imagine eating one of these,

but matt can down them like they're candy.

i made up a little menu for our birthday meal.

(yum)

the most amazing green lasagna

from david tanis' platter of figs cookbook

 very labor intensive, but worth it!

(also equaled delicious leftovers!)

 and then, 

matt's duck confit with potatoes roasted in duck fat (don't knock it til you've tried it) 

and a simple green salad.

 i made two desserts. 

a rhurbarb sorbet (so easy)

 and an amazingly good chocolate cake, 

modeled after the version we had at the oyster bliss event a few weeks ago.

it was a little risky to make this brand new recipe for matt's birthday cake, 

but it was really rich and perfect.

i almost forgot to stop eating & take a picture!

as you can see, we kept cutting away little non-pieces over the next week

until none remained.

our birthday meal was finished off with some irish coffee!

happy birthday goodness to my favorite person!

{here is to another year of eating and drinking and sharing life together}