Lately

So, at Christmas time, I ran into my good friend Sydney. She had had a baby very recently and we chit chatted about what it's like to be a happy zombie in baby land: no bouts of sleep longer than a few hours at a time, cute baby noises and expressions, and how that early bleary eyed goodness is the spring of hope and the winter of despair.

And we agreed on one thing in particular: when we're up at all hours of the night feeding a baby, one thing we both turned to is blogs. So we agreed that we would keep the blog posts coming, if for no other reason than it is nice to have something to read at 3:30 am when you're wrangling an infant into eating.

I'm pretty unsure of where to begin since it's been so long. Plus if this thing becomes an obligatory travelogue that I even detest reading, then it's a chore for everyone to read. So let's keep it light.

I love my baby I love my baby I love my baby.

Rower and I hit a real stride in January. The holidays were awesome, but tricky for a baby that was too young to sleep train, and didn't like traveling (which is basically what we did a lot of in October, November, and December). Christmas was still great; we got to see our families, Rower got maximum cuddles from everyone, and even a 24 hour stomach flu didn't keep us down.

Now that everything has calmed down, Row is sleeping like a champion. He pounds rice cereal, butternut squash and apples, and occasionally avocado. He is seven months old and scoots around on his back but shows no interest in crawling quite yet, no matter how much tummy time we force on him. He laughs and says "Dadadadadadadada" all day long with various levels of urgency. Harry and I just hold him and grin just listening to him. We've stepped back and realized a couple of times, "I'm sure this is entertaining to NO ONE but us, but who cares?!" We're trying not to be irritatingly-enthusiastic parents, but we've never been so enamored with a baby before. It really is the coolest thing I've ever done.

Other than being pleased as punch with parenthood (despite the occasional blowout diaper and the enormous pile of laundry that NEVER GETS SMALLER), things are chugging along. Harry is working crazy hard, non-stop. I remember in law school people told us that we should enjoy this time because life gets so much harder when a real job comes along. I remember disagreeing deep down because I was anxious about all the debt we were accruing, and knowing how relieved I'd be once we were finally able to start chipping away at it. I love our life now and would never go back, but I can't help but miss our old, tiny apartment with the prison toilet and love seat from hell. Mostly, I miss getting to spend hours of free time with Harry everyday.

Harry recently turned 29. As is tradition (which started in his childhood), I snuck out while he was sleeping and bought him his favorite donuts from Winchell's and stuck a candle in it and we sang to him before he went to work. I love that my husband's sweet tooth is really pretty limited to Winchell's donuts and a few other things; it seriously simplifies my life. We met up for lunch with the baby at the mall near his office, and that night I took him on a birthday date to one of my new favorite top three restaurants: A Food Affair. A funky name for an incredible French restaurant. We split a mushroom torte and I got beef bourguignon and Harry got an ENTIRE red snapper that had been flash fried with Thai spices.

Then we scampered off to our favorite movie theater (where we habitually sneak in Godiva dark chocolate milkshakes) and saw "Divergent." We are reading the book for our book club and I have to admit, the story is pretty good (kind of Hunger Games-y) but really Shailene Woodley is incredible. That girl can EMOTE. And yes. Yes. That is Mr. Pamuk from "Downton Abbey." I kept thinking the whole time, "You moron, you were awful to Mary Crawley and then you got what was coming to you."

We still get to go to Imagine Dragons concerts. And, the concerts have changed considerably since 2009. It no longer costs $6 to see them. Their shows sell out online in hours. They now tour all over the world. And the concerts completely blow my mind. I look around at people of LITERALLY all ages and styles and walks of life, packed like sardines into gigantic arena seats and standing space, and they are all singing along to even the most obscure lyrics and going completely nuts. Harry and I are stunned, and so proud of Dan and all the hard work that the band has put in. We still often forget that Dan is famous. I still do a double take sometimes when I hear them on the radio (which is everyday). That's probably because Dan and the band are all still kind, happy guys who work insanely hard. We couldn't be prouder of them or happier for them.

And we got to attend the Beatles Reunion Show taping (and sit 5th row) to see them cover "Revolution." That night really blew my mind. They joined Maroon 5, John Mayer, Katy Perry, Keith Urban, Pharell Williams, Stevie Wonder, Annie Lennox, Dave Grohl, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr and a few others I can't quite remember this second. Harry and I just sort of looked at each other like, "Drink this in, because this is a crazy once in a lifetime experience."

We got to see them on Valentine's Day. The lamest of pictures, yes, indeed.

I feel like so much more has been going on than I can fit into a few paragraphs, but at the same time our life is pretty repetitive and simple. Especially since I feel like my life has now been chunked into 3-4 hour increments, based on Rowers eating and sleeping needs. Case in point, things are good, and getting better all the time (if you started singing "Better, better, beeeeeeetter," after that last phrase, I did too).

Here's to getting back on the blogging wagon.

How was that, Sydney?

And everything else in a mild hurry

Well yay, now I've caught us up to the end of October. Way to go me! Here's the rest of our lives in compression format.

Girl's Trip 2012

We all drove/flew to Orange County for the annual girl's trip last November!

We went to Disneyland, did some shopping, and Tiff, Karina and I ran a 10K in the Woodbridge area of Irvine.  It's such a treat to get to spend time together.  Megan went above and beyond and surprised us all with matching sweatshirts to commemorate the weekend.

Girl's dinner

Tower of Terror

RunLove 10K race

And then a few days later, on election day, I hacked about 7 inches of my hair off.  It's been fun having a long bob!  I am glad I was brave enough to take the plunge and Natalie did an amazing job.

Thanksgiving:

We all trekked to Elizabeth's beautiful new house in Draper, Utah.

Bowling with McO cousins the night before Thanksgiving

Jubes is the cutest

And knows how to make a good funny face

Early morning giggle fest

Best buds and only 10 days apart

Fan-damily

The apple pie goddess

The orange rolls goddess

Thanksgiving = 8 busy and fun hours of cooking and about 30 minutes of eating.

Hungry

The cutest Juju there ever was

A morning stroll in beautiful Draper

Harry timed it just right and managed to appear in this panorama twice!
And sadly only a segment of Jeff got captured.

Christmas:

We moved to LA!  And one of the very first things I did was drive down the street (literally- a 6 minute drive) to see my Katt.  She's one of my Palo Alto besties and seeing her was one of my favorite Christmas presents.

Megan lives nearby and we met up to hear Sherri Dew speak

And we went out to lunch with her cute little boy

Mistletoe given out by the Boy Scouts of America.  We put it in our car.
Those Boy Scouts.  Always serving our country.

Christmas Eve jammies.  It's all very serious.

Christmas morning for me and Hal.

A picture of one of our most notable gifts- handerpants.

Now we live in LA. It's been a few months and so far we've had a few adventures. Harry and I are both working, and we actually work across the street from each other, so we get to meet up for lunch!

Aaaand that's enough of catch up for now.  Whew!

Los Angeles: Nutshell style

My sister E joked with me a few months ago that I should create a separate blog for all the celebrity sightings I hoped to have while in LA. And to make it extra funny, there should only ever be one post, and the one sighting I would have would have been an extra from some obscure episode of "Star Trek: The Next Generation."

Luckily, our experience wasn't as lame as that. Here are the celebrities we've seen while in LA:







LA (Santa Monica, specifically) has been a whirlwind. One thing we didn't expect is that we wouldn't have the time to do everything we wanted to do. I've been working from home from 8-3 everyday. With that and Harry working full time, it actually doesn't leave much time to do much else.

That's not to say we didn't do fun things. We still got to hang out with Dan + Aja, and we traveled to see family every weekend, explored by going to new restaurants and theaters, and went for evening walks and jogs along the beach. I went down to visit my sister/bro-in-law/nephew/brother/parents about once a week when Harry had an after-work event that I wasn't invited to. And we've been adventurous in the food department as well.

On 4th of July weekend, our friends the Dyers crashed with us for the night, and we all met up the next day with our good friends, the Santistevans. It was fun to see some familiar Palo Alto faces!






Then we partied Irvine Style with barbeque, food, and togetherness.



Also, Jeff and Merzy had us (me, Harry, Cam) over for a sleepover, Junior High style, complete with pizza, candy, movie, staying up late... and we almost went to get Krispie Kreme donuts at midnight, but being the wimps that we are, we were konked out on the couch by then.





For our 2 year anniversary, Harry did his research and surprised me by taking me to Lucque. It was (cue: far off look in eyes, tear of nostalgia, trickling of drool down chin) so good.

I'm not a big beef person. But at Lucque, the braised beef short ribs were calling my name. The restaurant owner was making the rounds, asking everyone how they liked their food. He got to our table and told me I was eating a dish that was featured on the Food Network show "The Best Thing I Ever Ate." Not that it mattered, I barely heard him over the sound of fireworks of joy shooting off in my brain. I will never be satisfied with short ribs ever again after this experience, I'm afraid.

They wrote "Happy Anniversary" on our dessert plate. Which you can't even really see... at all.



Last Friday, my Mom drove out to spend the day with me. It was so much fun! We ate at the 3rd Street Promenade at The Market, and took our time wandering around afterward, choosing gelato and a few chocolates to share, and walking around the mall.




All in all, this was a really wonderful summer. And it's not exactly over either.

Next summer if we come back, we'll wise up by living in an area that is cheaper, more central, and not so traffic-ridden. But living in Santa Monica has been such a blast and I'm sure I'll miss our summer by the ocean when it's over.