I'm going no where and I'm SO excited!

Life continues to chug along at our house. Every week is a slight improvement over the previous one, in terms of nailing down the routine and making the trains run on time. And Sidney doesn't seem to interested in figuring out how to not wake up every 3 hours, but we're working on that. The advice from the pediatrician and the Pump Station was to make sure we're not taking him out of the room when he wakes up...um, yeah that means I have to get up out of bed to go in there and feed him in order to get him back in the crib. Right. I'm so dead to the world that feeding him in our bed is all I have the energy for. Must work on this. Will be good for everyone.

BUT - guess what? Remember how I talked about needing a night away so badly? Well the Gods of the Interwebz were listening (well, actually my sister in law) and I get to go away next Saturday night! My sister in law, Erica, is a "cruise critic" ;-) and she is going to be touring and reporting on a new ship in Long Beach. She's invited to stay over night with dinner and entertainment, AND she gets to bring a guest! ME ME ME!!! I'm so excited - my first cruise to nowhere! We literally don't even leave the port, but it will be magical nonetheless...except for the part where I have to schlep my pump and store milk for the 18ish hours that I'm gone. But I get to go away and put on a nice dress and drink free cocktails and eat a yummy dinner and see a show and maybe even hit the gym and/or jacuzzi AND sleep in my very own bed with no interruptions! WOO HOO! And Mike is a true saint for granting me this opportunity and for staying home with the little ones (if you're around next Saturday evening and feel like helping him out give him a call!). A well-rested and refreshed mama is good for everyone. Trust me.

Enough about me. Ivy makes me so proud. She has just been an amazing kid over the last couple weeks...not that she isn't usually awesome, but she's on fire these days. Last week her preschool teacher told us that she was a really great friend to the new girl in the class, taking her under her wing and showing her the ropes. My heart melted to hear this.

"This is our shopping cart..."

She's using Hebrew a lot for almost any word that she knows, and she started calling me Ima! She loves her play kitchen and pretend food and her little dishes and mixer, and will often make Mike and I "birthday dinners" complete with cupcakes. She is also now totally self-relient in the mornings. She stumbles out of bed and heads straight to the kitchen, bleary eyed and hair a mess, where she gets her yogurt from the fridge and sits at the table to eat. It's pretty hilarious for some reason. We're also kick ass with potty training. She only has maybe 1 accident a week, and is probably ready to ditch the nighttime Pull-Ups soon. I could not be happier to only have one set of diapers...especially since her little tush looks so much cuter now! She's just all around awesome, and I had to brag. Besides this is the closest thing we're going to have to a baby book, so deal with it.

Sidney is super smiley and chatty and loves to wake me up by talking my ear off...now if only he would wait to wake up until say 7am, I'd be so much happier! He enjoys hanging out in his pink bumbo while Ivy reads him Dora books. And apparently he rolled over for the first time last weekend. I say apparently because I actually did not witness it. Poor Sid - I think I have Ivy's first roll on video. Anyway, we were with my parents at Nordstrom in Irvine, home to many half-way point meetups with them, and while Ivy, my mom and I were dutifully shopping for shoes in the kids' shoe department, my dad put Sid on a blanket on the floor to take some pictures. He was chillin' on his tummy and all of sudden just rolled to his back, or so I hear. And of course he has not done it again since, at least not for me. I tell you, that shoe department is magical. In honor of the occasion, Ivy got a new pair of purple sneakers - Twinkle Toes, to be exact. When she kicked the back of my seat on the drive home in the dark, I kept thinking there was a cop following me.

They're all the rage. Don't you wish you had a pair? Maybe if you're good, Nana will take you shoe shopping too!